


I'm In Misery (As Old As Your Omens)

by bansheesquad (deathwailart)



Series: Brae Saoidh [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarves, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 13:26:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19335430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/bansheesquad
Summary: Scenes from a dwarven childhood or how loyalty can twist you up inside when it's worded just right.





	I'm In Misery (As Old As Your Omens)

Belnesse by morning was as it had ever been: a fog rolling in off the harbour carrying with it the stink of a fetid rotting tide - for Belnesse had never been known for a bountiful catch, only the dead that returned to her shoreline – that mingled with the smog of her foundries, the smoke of chimneys from workshops and the homes that clustered tight together. Chokedamp bloomed same as mushrooms after rain; here oily puddles of slick were all that came after the morning smirrs that doused the lower city near all the year round. In the dark of the undercity was where it all settled, creeping into the corners, through the cracks to render the upper air enough to have unlucky bats or birds like as not ready to drop from above. Unfortunate creatures that'd never see the sky again.  
  
Some like as not never had, same as the small roving band hunting them.  
  
Easy pickings. Wasteful not to go make a grab for them and it was what Yngvi found himself dispatched for early (he assumed, time was a tricky thing when you never saw the rising or setting of the sun with your own eyes, never had, adults dictated and taught to him and all the rest) alongside Gunnar, Snorri, Jim, Erna, and Pernille, plus a selection of others who he wasn't quite so close to. A band of dwarven children a group less likely to be set upon than them solo, or if they were, then a less inviting target working in a group to scavenge. Faster too. This might well be their breakfast.  
  
Yngvi assumed. What was the point in naming meals when it was by candlemarks or bells or watches that he, Yngvi, wasn't ever a part of? Wisdom of everyone over and above his head, quite literally in fact. Yngvi who, like all the rest, was as dirty as a potato freshly plucked from the soil given the briefest of dusting off, in clothes about destined for the rag bin were dwarves of Belnesse's lower city of the inclination to have such wasteful practices as rag bins.   
  
Not that it was his place to go saying much about it if he wanted to do much eating or to have a mouth in any sort of a state to be doing any eating with it. Snorri still had a big fat lip after his lot of backtalk (Yngvi and Gunnar had agreed privately in the dark in the most furtive of hand signals and whispers more the shapes of words than words themselves that it hadn't warranted such a punishment but you couldn't just  _say_  that) done in the presence of their uncle, great and gnarled and steaming same as hot metal thrust in the slack tub.  
  
Once – only once – Yngvi had had to drink a bowl of it, thick and cold and slimy instead of the watery soup the rest had been served. Three days he'd spent retching and miserable, squatting in corners. He'd never run foul of making  _that_  particular mistake again.  
  
His boot crunched down on something, a boot where his toes would soon be pressing through because they'd belonged to three dwarves before him and the leather was worn to nothing, had been eaten away by time and the filth of Belnesse, by myriad trips much the same as this. A wing once white now stained with soot and muck, a sad looking bird that was meant for out by the sea and the harbour, a decent weight to it when Yngvi hefted it into the satchel slung over his shoulder and neck. He'd never seen a bird die, when he thought about it. Rarely seen them fly. They were and they weren't. Same as the rest of them; one day going about their business then lying still and cold, a cohort watching from the rafters as he worked. The black eyes were closed at least. Yngvi didn't like when they started back at him, it was already enough that the pointed yellow bill was poking him in the thigh as he tried to get the flap of his satchel shut since it wouldn't do to have anyone see a spoil like that unless it was the rest of this little band.   
  
A shiv to the kidney happened for much less down here.  
  
"'Ere, Gunnar!" Jim had a nasal voice on account of something that kept crawling around in his sinuses, never to be cleared out much to the distress of anyone he dripped on or wheezed at. "What d'you reckon this is?" That quality extended to the rest of him: something that suggested he needed to spend a bit longer with the soap and water when he had a bath, stains that stuck to him, wispy blonde hair forever clinging to his forehead.  
  
Gunnar, Yngvi's own brother in an elevated way that was  _recognised_  even amongst a pile of dwarven children all called brother and sisters on account of them being even in age than the rest (twins, by their reckoning) and with the same dark hair (never brushed), dark eyes (shadowed from lack of sleep) and pale skin beneath a similar crust of dirt, wasn't the leader. Not precisely. They didn't exactly have one really but it'd probably be one of the girls, Erna or Pernille on account of them being apt to get on with things. Gunnar did have a keen sort of mind though, the sort that knew plants, and he had clever hands for other things, as well as how he just  _knew_  how to watch for timings and arcane mysteries that baffled them, unsophisticated turnips that they were.  
  
(Aunts and uncles were never ones to spare criticism.)  
  
Shadowing his brother because you never could be too careful, Yngvi was there to peer over his shoulder as Snorri brought up the rear, all of them clustered about what appeared at first glance to be pale white sticks thrust into the dirt, yellowed in places, some broken, some not. Gunnar bent, handed his satchel to Yngvi who looped it over his other shoulder securely, and poked them.  
  
"Is it a plant?" Jim asked, almost excited. Yngvi couldn't blame him, seeing a plant was a rare treat. Bringing one back would be a reward he couldn't get his round at the moment.  
  
Erna turned her head slow as she could, twisting the ends of her thick black curls back under her scarf. "How aren't you dead? Thought we did culls on stupid every other month so how come you keep slipping through? They're bones, you tit; even you've seen a bone."   
  
There was a long silence that stretched and grew and flexed itself. Snorri, unfortunately round of face given the rest of them, darted a glance at Yngvi who sucked in a breath. The time for a good insult had passed and indeed all that Jim managed was a sullen and embarrassed mutter of 'shut up' as Yngvi gave his brother a nudge. Pernille, most likely, had a book's worth of insults. Somehow her training involved it but she seldom shared them until she was dishing them out which never seemed a fair exchange. Such was the dwarven way.  
  
"What sort of bones?" Yngvi asked because someone had to, might as well be him. "Too big for bird bones, yeah?"  
  
"Bird bones are hollow inside, god shown that once. Too big for rats or mice or little beasties like that but might be something good, still got the tasty bits for broth in there, gimme a hand." Gunnar was digging with his fingers and really, what was more dirt under their nails at this point in the hunt for a prize? Coming home with bones for the pot regardless of their origin would warrant a good feed at the table when there was a bird in Yngvi's bag too. They'd have provided. Done their bit for family and clan. Never enough for praise – little was at their age – but certainly enough to have earned their keep for another day as they set off for home past the shift workers changing over, a knight of the Order, muck splattered all the way up to the knees of their gleaming armour, and thieves for there was a similar abundance of them down here too, dodging out of the way of all comers with grins and shoves.  
  
A good start to a long day, a small band of siblings, a bird, and mystery bones.  
  


* * *

  
  
Tucked away in the dark, hunkered down amidst a pile of bodies where it was warm and not as damp as it could be, Yngvi rolled over, knees bumping into Gunnar's. Snorri was snoring. Across the room in the back corner where the fresher air never reached someone was coughing wetly, probably the sound that had dragged him from sleep in the first place.  
  
"Oi," he whispered softly. Someone else grumbled, rolling over. Yngvi hoisted himself up enough to blink in the dark and—well it wasn't Jim, it was the girls, Erna who had rolled over first, Pernille next so they were still tucked tight and close to one another to keep good and warm. Neither of them ever got sick. Neither did him or Gunnar unless closeness spread it or the food. Or the water.   
  
"Oi." Gunnar whispered back, his eyes glinting in the dark, shifting closer beneath their overlapping shared blankets. Rare. But brothers could do that. There weren't rules saying they couldn't. Erna and Pernille did it too so sisters could do it just the same since the rules were probably the exact same if unwritten and unspoken since that was the wisdom of families. "What is it?"  
  
"D'you—" Yngvi was interrupted by another by another burst of coughing, both of them peering over to the dwarf huddled away from the rest. They'd been told to sleep alone. And sickness guaranteed reluctance to risk joining them in that sort of punishment. "D'you know what it is?"  
  
"No. Not a sausage. Might get better or it might not, s'tricky to tell with these things." Away from the rest, Gunnar didn't always come off so learned; he was chewing his lip now so Yngvi tugged the blankets up and tighter around them both. "Remember what I told you about how if they're coughing to keep your distance, or touching things they've coughed on."  
  
"Right, right." Seemed easy enough and sensible too, who would want someone to cough on them or their things even if those things couldn't always be avoided? After a pause, he nudged his brother. "Why?"  
  
"If it's one of the things you get from chokedamp?" He sucked a breath in through his teeth, half on the verge of saying something or so it seemed before he shook his head, seemingly thinking better of it. "I was listening to some of them talk about it before, well mostly old Reidar y'know?" Yngvi nodded when Gunnar paused which was what he'd been waiting for. "It goes all bloody, best he put it was drowning in your lungs. But it's your blood. Horrible sweats. Can't breathe. Bad way to go as far as there are ways to go down here."  
  
"Oh." It quieted him, which was saying plenty because it was hard, sometimes, for Yngvi to be quiet, when words seemed to just fall out of him without meaning to, faster and faster the harder he tried to button his mouth.  
  
"If that's why you woke me…" Gunnar yawned with a crack of his jaw, starting to pull the blanket tighter about himself with it planted carefully beneath his feet to keep as much warmth as possible (everyone learnt, those who didn't lose fingertips and toe tips and even parts of the ears to cold and more when all came creeping) as he settled, head close enough his breath stirred Yngvi's unwashed hair.  
  
"No. Yes. Both." Mouth pulled into a scowl as his brows knit together, Yngvi burrowed down closer to keep his brother's attention. "It woke me, it's been waking  _everyone_  'cept Snorri, you know that. But, like, the  _thing is_  that I was thinking 'bout some stuff. Stories they tell us."  
  
"They tell us a lot of stories, there's always stories." Gunnar yawned but at least propped up his cheek on a hand, willing to hear Yngvi out on whatever had to be said.   
  
"It's the one about—it's um, it's the one about the siblings?" He started carefully, burrowing down a fraction of an inch more to put them at eye level even if some part of him didn't want to, no matter that they were brothers. "How they're siblings, the way it counts with us," he hurried that bit, about to wave a hand until he remembered it was under the blanket so that all it did was smack Gunnar in the chest, "I know it's different most everywhere else, but, um, they're siblings, and one gets caught…one gets caught in a rope at the docks. Then the other one ties it to themselves—ties it—"  
  
"Ties it to themselves to haul them in," Gunnar prompted gently as Yngvi faltered.  
  
"Right, but they both drown." He almost made to turn over onto his back then only he couldn't same as how he couldn't quite look Gunnar in the eye either. "Drowning sounds horrible."  
  
"Well it's like what I was saying before with the chokedamp coughs. There's other stuff too where you drown in your lungs." Yngvi shuddered, listening to the wet wracking coughs. That was the sort of thing Gunnar added for nothing sometimes. In the lungs, in the bones, in the spaces in between. Gunnar lay quietly but his hand grabbed for Yngvi's, equally sweaty – when had that happened? – reassuring in that clamminess. "Sentiment and hope. How old were we when they taught us that?"  
  
"Dunno, don't remember not knowing it."  
  
"You know I'd be on the other end," which was a terrible hushed admission, and a terrible one that had Yngvi squeezing Gunnar's hand painfully tight in the dark and damp.  
  
"I know. I'd be there too. But that was the thing: loyalty. Loyalty makes you sick same as chokedamp, right, it's all pestilence, and plague, and disease, then they say  _loyal to us above everything_  even when they tell us that story about siblings saving each other and drowning. But you're meant to be loyal. How's it loyal to leave your sibling to die?"  
  
None of it was fair, to wake Gunnar with that, in the middle of the night, to not even have much of a plan. But at least Gunnar was used to it.  
  
Gunnar exhaled, a great shaking sigh that curled his shoulders inward with the effort of it. "I think," he began after a lengthy moment that Yngvi usually associated with their trips out as part of a group – and of course there were times his brother was off alone, different lessons already – so he had other experience to offer that Yngvi did not, "it's about balance. Loyal to a big thing, y'know? And any of us being little things where we don't mater too much because…Because…"  
  
Gunnar didn't want to finish. He wasn't looking at Yngvi same as Yngvi wasn't looking at him.  
  
"We don't."  
  
Treacherous. Treasonous. If anyone else heard them say it they'd either shop them for it or they'd store it, save it, wait for a good moment to use it; no matter how close any of them were when it was scrapping against whatever came for them, banding tight against the rest of Belnesse's underbelly, it was the way of it down here when every morsel was hard-earned, especially for those on the very lowest rungs. There were few smaller, after all, with further to reach than the young replaced with less effort than others. Well, still a few, but hard to worry or think about them here.  
  
"How come you're worried about it tonight? Have you been worried about it before?"  
  
Yngvi kept his mouth shut and tried to pull his hand free so he could roll away from his brother, hot with shame that was starting to become familiar, welling up from low in the pit of his stomach, sure his face was lighting up the dark.  
  
"Yngvi?" Gunnar pressed, urgent this time.  
  
Yngvi's free hand came up to swipe at his face, damp with sweat. Maybe tears if he wasn't too embarrassed to admit that even to himself (which he was) as he nodded, utterly miserable that even Gunnar knew that much, that he hadn't been able to just keep it to himself. Why did it bother him? Why was he worrying? Why couldn't he just get on with things same as everyone else did. Even  _Jim_  just got on with it all and no one had ever accused Jim of being overly bright (or maybe that was a blessing, perhaps, just being able to get on with it, a savage sort of thought that made him more miserable because Yngvi did  _like_  Jim but that was jealousy for you, it didn't have to make any sort of sense). Gunnar, obviously, couldn't be this way. Gunnar didn't think these things thoughts because he didn't wake up in the night with a question eating holes in him 'til he gave voice to it. Gunnar was the one woken up by the question coming from someone else instead. No, Gunnar was normal, and good, and he'd get on just fine, wouldn't be dragged down one way or the other by a brother like Yngvi who realised to his horror that the tears – for they were tears now, he couldn't deny them out of existence – were falling, a good steady trickle, his nose running too.  
  
"Yes," he choked it with a wet sniffle, "I just—it's not fair. It doesn't make sense."  
  
"No it's not. And it doesn’t. But it's," and Gunnar was hauling him in close, uncaring of the snot, the sweat, the tears, holding him through the shudders because Yngvi couldn't just cry without it being a whole production now could he? "It's how it is. How it has to be. We don't survive if we don't go with it. _We_  don't. I'll be there. I'll always be there, and so will you, and we'll get by." He ruffled Yngvi's hair best he could, a gentle headbutt thrown in for good measure that did manage a watery hiccup out of Yngvi. "Get some sleep and it won't be so bad, yeah?"  
  
"Right. Yeah."  
  
Sleep was a long time coming, lulled by Gunnar's steady breathing and warmth where he lay tucked up against him, that awful coughing and gasping breath fading into the background behind him. The dreams were no better but he'd lifted maybe one stone off his chest at the very least so his own breathing came easier, and down in the chokedamp, in the cold with their old thin blankets shared as they were, that was more than just something.  
  


* * *

  
  
Hulda's face had long been a ruin, lined with scars to tell a tale the way old maps did when folded and unfolded, but she knew Belnesse and far beyond better than even the eldest of their number, sharper than any cruel wicked little knife that might be palmed away. A smuggler of value and renown, and utterly loyal in that loyalty was demanded and bound tight about any soul not blooded to or of their clan leader; Einar expected, after all. Einar was not one to be disappointed, father of fathers, head of the table, dark of hair, sure of gait, and though so few of them had ever seen a keen-eyed bird, there was something about his gaze that suited hawks, ravens, eagles, birds with eyes to clap upon smaller things with a tip of the head before they dove in.   
  
"Well lad," Hulda said which shouldn't have been a balm when everything was smarting; most of all what pride Yngvi had cobbled together lay bruised and aching. "What's the matter?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
One eyebrow went up, a thin silvery line threaded up and through it that pulled the left side of her face with it. "Right. Well you'll not be wanting one of these then will you if it's nothing?" There wasn't a single rustle as her hand delved into one of the myriad pockets of her coat – a heavy dark green thing, a coat to be admired (it had once been a game, to count the pockets, to guess their number, Hulda would never say so they'd all argued over it which was the best sort of game for a group of rowdy children keen to make their own fun when time allowed) – to pulled out waxed paper, the waft of peppermint hitting before she could unwrap them.  
  
His mouth water, bottom lip pursed tight to try holding it in as the memory scalded his cheeks, burned him enough that he itched and wanted to squirm, all over again. "You don't want to hear it," he tried again instead.  
  
Hulda stared, unwrapped the paper, and popped a mint in her mouth.  
  
Waited.  
  
And waited. And  _waited_.  
  
"Got a bollocking off Einar." One mumble, low as he could manage, red hot to the tips of his ears. "Right proper one and it was—I tried. Tried as hard as I could and it was in front of everyone and he just—"  
  
There was a mint pressed into his palm, sticky with promise, and it'd keep his mouth busy so he'd  _shut up_  anyway so he shoved it in, licked his palm despite the dirt, and wiped that same hand on dirtier trousers because it wasn't as if they could really get much worse at this point. He'd said it. Said something embarrassing to Hulda, experienced, grown-up, best of the best—  
  
"Shouted at you did he?" Hulda glanced over at him, the mint rattling between her teeth. " _Oh_ …" She let her breath whistle out through her teeth when he didn't stop himself from hunching down small as small could be – and he was the smallest one out of his lot so that was small though not enough for his liking, not small enough to disappear entirely – and she slurped the mint loudly for a long moment before continuing. "Other way was it, all quiet, where you had to strain your ears to hear it but oh what he said—"  
  
Her finger jabbed him hard in the sternum, forced him upright a moment before his chin dropped to his chest, eyes stinging.  
  
"It cut clean through worse than anything else."  
  
He'd never though it possible to be smaller.  
  
Which wasn't fair, by rights, since even some of the new little ones were already bigger than him somehow and he didn't get that, didn't understand how that worked when he was surely older than them so that meant than he should get to be taller but this was a different smaller, he was only trying not to think about it. Because it was Hulda. Hulda talking as if she'd been there and a horrifying thought rose to the surface again, as it had, and was the reason he'd taken himself off alone even if it wasn't the smartest choice: were they all talking about it? Were they laughing about it? Stupid Yngvi drawing Einar's attention in the worst possible way.  
  
Hulda's arm wrapped about him, her coat carrying with it all the strange scents of her work that Yngvi wasn't privy to beyond stories heard as he scurried about trying not to get underfoot. Pipe smoke same as half of them. Half-comforting. Halfway to having him cringe away. Not that he had a chance or much inclination tucked under her and into her side with the unravelled end of a braid the colour of a copper penny tickling his ear as she continued to rattle the mint around her mouth, breathing a sigh out through her nose.  
  
(Thing was, you knew sharpish where you stood with Einar. Where everyone stood with Einar. There wasn't much to be said, wasn't much anyone could say.)  
  
Another mint was tucked in his hand, soundless as the first. "C'n you teach me that?" He asked without even thinking about it around the mint already in his mouth, wanting something,  _anything_ , to fill the silence roaring in his ears as he stuffed it into a cheek before he could say anything else that might be stupid. It was saying something stupid that had started this mess after all.  
  
"Course, I've got the time and you're a bright one from what I hear.  
  
"But…but I'm not." The whisper had his voice cracking, eyes downcast and burning worse now for holding the tears in because he wouldn't cry and shame himself in front of Hulda. He wasn't a baby. "Einar said—"  
  
"Oh bugger that old goat." But Yngvi didn't have a chance to be properly shocked or scandalised or whatever he was meant to be hearing anyone say that about  _Einar_. "Only have half an ear for whatever he says else it's all you'll hear and nothing else. It'll make you go deaf, y'know, worse than that you'll drive yourself mad. Jumping when you think you hear him walking past, flinching at feet by the door. Can't be doing that. Takes years off you." She scratched a scar that criss-crossed under her right eye, thick and pocket. "You remember Moran? You old enough?"  
  
Yngvi winced, answer enough. He hadn't been a father. Hadn't been an uncle. Hadn't been old enough to be ancient though he'd more than had the grey for it all over, trembling, hands that shook, scuttling spiders at the table, but they'd kept him around for—well Yngvi didn't know. None of them wanted to speculate why Moran had been around now they were old enough to think on it. Even little as they were when he'd actually been around they'd been embarrassed by the way he'd shook. The shouting in the night. How he wept. Then it had been sad. Then Moran had been gone one day as if he'd never been around because when someone  _had_  asked (Erna, Yngvi was sure it had been Erna who'd drawn the short straw out the lot of them and asked) they'd pretended as if there had never been a Moran, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, everyone old enough to know who had had to know.  
  
"No one ever found him," he whispered. You didn't speak of the dead, the lost, the gone. To speak was to summon them.  _You need a health fear of things young in this life_ , someone had said. Casper, possibly, treasurer, the type to give a proper accounting of matters to the young.   
  
(He never saw Hulda's mouth pull tight. Took years to find out what did happen to Moran.)  
  
"Moran," she said, softer now, the undertone practiced in a nursery as children piled together he thought," he was scared of everything all the time. He was ages with me you know. But it turned him grey, turned him to things that made him shake. Too much drink. As if that'd help – it doesn't, you think it does, and something it will, for a little while, remember this for when you're older Yngvi, but he drank enough to drown a man – when all the while his hands would shake.  
  
"You get nervous, picking a lock with them watching?" Yngvi nodded instead of saying anything. Instructors missed nothing. They noticed everything you didn't want them to. It was easier to admit to all that without saying words to Hulda, away from all the eyes to witness the shame of picks jamming, sometimes breaking, or his hands fumbling, or something going wrong (always going wrong, that's how it seemed to him)). "Well imagine there's someone watching everything and your hands are shaking. So you try to stop them."  
  
"They shake worse the more I think about 'em shaking."  
  
"Exactly."  
  
They sat it in silence. It was easier to have sympathy for Moran now. At the same time as he grappled with something too big, something he couldn't put a name to where he could be Moran with Hulda tugging him as far away from him because he wasn't too stupid not to miss that. To also be ashamed too in a way that pulled hot, tight, and sick in ways there weren't words for.  
  
"Listen to Einar when you need to so you don't make it worse, he's got hard hands and a harder head, he can make it so—so  _difficult_ ," and the word pushed its way out of her in a way he had come to know, something burrowing up through the dirt to find the light, impossible as it seemed, digging and scratching. "But it passes. His eyes move on. You're one little thing in front of him. It'll pass. You've time. You'll know where you stand but we never stand still forever else we'd be dead wouldn't we?"  
  
"What if I don't?"  
  
"You can't think like that. You can't. If you do then you're lost, he's won already Yngvi." Her voice had gone thick and tight, same as his did sometimes, but he didn't have much time to dwell on it because she was pulling him in close, crushed against him in a way no one did. There was a moment of panic. No one did that who wasn't Gunnar, someone could come for you after all, and there was little affection without some price associated but he leant against her, great shuddery breaths escaping him. Not sobs. Just…just something lifting. Same as the weight that lifted sometimes.  
  
(That was the other thing about being down in the dark. Seeds took root, impossibly, and the roots spread out, hooked deep, clung stubbornly in all the places you wished they wouldn't, enough that you swore you there were phantom threads worming their way through you, burrs under the clothes, under the skin.)  
  
(Not that he could tell her that. Not when she was here, giving advice to him and his downcast head.)  
  
"Got something for you, didn't know if you were too big or not but I don't think you are." She leant back to allow him to gather his dignity maybe, if he had that, and he scrubbed his hands over his face just to be sure that it wasn't wet. A little damp. Sweaty. Definitely sweat. "S'meant to be something off where the folks we were dealing with come from," she explained as she rummaged again in her pockets, a smile tugging on her now ruddy cheeks; the concept of favourites was dangerous yet it blossomed, filling him with such a giddy warmth that the wild swing from desperate to hopeful elation left him reeling. She passed him a bundle of cloth bound in twine, urging him to open it. "Resilience and a sure step. Not sure if I believe that about great big beasts lumbering in the dark but still, it's a nice thing to have."  
  
Yngvi had few things to call his. Clothes and boots handed down, stitched and patched and mended. Blankets shared with Gunnar. Weapons and tools and such sundries that were part and parcel of life here, belonging to them all only for practice and work rather than  _to_  them. Food, water, medicine, shelter: a life to be earned, to be fought for. This soft small beast of burden unwrapped and clutched tight his and his alone, the tightness in his chest, in his mouth, the way it hurt to breathe scary for their newness and he threw himself at Hulda for the lack of anything else that he knew to do.  
  
In that moment he wanted not to be better, instead he was  _enough_. Enough, and cared for, and perhaps, for a fleeting moment, he considered that he might be loved.  
  


* * *

  
  
Summons had been issued, early enough that they were all still trying to plough through their breakfasts of thick honeyed porridge, fuel for the day ahead. Not for them to glance about at the more alluring scents wafting their way. The bacon. The eggs. The fried potatoes. Tomatoes. Luxuries to be extended to them at some point in the future – if they made it – when nothing was guaranteed. At least they'd earned a little sweetness in their breakfast today to keep them up and at it, a swirl of honey stirred through that kept it palatable when it had been in the pot this long. Yngvi was scraping the sunken honey from the bottom of his wooden bowl when boots stopped behind him, the urge to flinch suppressed long enough ago that it passed him by but still lingered, coiled in his spine, the trap's mouth open.  
  
"Einar wants to see you." Someone a few years older, a runner with their hair cut close to their scalp and skin freckled to speak to life above the undercity jerked their head in the direction of where he was meant to go. Immediacy was demanded with your elders, most of all Einar.  
  
"Right, I'm—" He swung his leg over the bench, shoved his unfinished bowl to the middle for whoever was unfortunate enough to be on clean-up duty for the day, his breakfast already threatening to crawl back up his throat. Snorri was already making for the bowl. Waste not, want not. "Did he say—Right, they've gone, course they've gone."  
  
"Good luck," Gunnar said quietly from across the table, a look of mingled sympathy and reassurance sent his way, Erna and Pernille offering tight smiles, Jim sniffing. "I'll see you later."  
  
"Yeah. See you later." He forced a smile and headed off. They'd agreed on that before even if there wasn't a guarantee at the best of times, least of all if and when Einar asked for you personally.  
  
It was a long walk to Einar's private office. Not that it was an office, Yngvi already knew that from lessons, but for the undercity, for what they carved out down here, it certainly was, and it was luxurious in comparison to every other private space, moreso in the privacy it afforded Einar with a door and lock all his own. A long walk past so many people all glancing over at him or going so far as to stare openly. Some nudged. Some muttered. His knees threatened to go before he made it to the door and knocked.  
  
"Get in here and sit boy!"  
  
He was in, door shut, arse down fast enough that he definitely regretted eating so much of his breakfast, a hot acidic rush of wetness in his mouth accompanied by a rising oily queasiness he swallowed, hoping he didn't pull a face at the foul taste. Both hands were firmly planted on his knees to keep them from fidgeting, a habit he'd become known for already to the point of teasing by his teachers, mostly Vibeke who said it was the trait of an artificer, Alvis who threatened to slam books on his hands or legs if he couldn't keep himself still in languages, and Ivar who simply waved him on to let him burn it all off when they were sparring with one another or the dummies. It wouldn't do to draw Einar's gaze to something in particular right now. Not something unfortunate. Even if he knew. He had to. Einar knew everything that went on.  
  
"Sir," he choked out, voice catching, somewhere between a whisper and rasp as if he'd not spoken for days.  
  
"I had a thought, lad," Einar's voice had a richness to it that ran through all of him as a vein of pure silver, Yngvi caught off-guard at being called lad instead of boy, by the smile from under the beard and moustache where not a speck of grey dared to show, a warmth he hadn't expected in that voice. "There was something I wonder about when it came to you and if you might be capable of it but first I'd have you tell me something and tell me true: are you willing to prove yourself?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
There was a stretch of silence where Einar's gaze – eyes as dark as Yngvi's, an uncomfortable thing to notice at last, this close to him – landed upon him which wasn't a thing any of them enjoyed for Einar wasn't the oldest, not by a long margin, but his authority wasn't ever to be questioned, a strong arm to keep all in line even beyond their clan. Others came to pay tribute, even men, elves, half-elves, the thieves with the truce that had been hashed out that Yngvi was learning the history of alongside the rest of them, ancient as Belnesse herself. Not all could do that. Only someone with strength and cunning could. Einar was an imposing dwarf on top of all that with those dark eyes that might bore through ore itself as well as those older and larger, dark hair slicked back and it was there, at the temples, where the first streaks of grey sat, the same long nose Yngvi hoped to grow into same as others; it paid dividends if you looked like the boss. Solid. Immovable, something sly about the mouth too that had Yngvi squirming, unable to stop himself.  
  
"Hulda in particular tells me you're a bright lad, clever with the hands and I've heard tell of it," he rifled through a series of papers on the ornate desk – probably spoils from some conquest if not a custom job Yngvi imagined – as he spoke, voice a smoky murmur that Yngvi strained to listen to. (This was part of it; invite them close, there were always lessons of course, the trick was catching on). "They say you've got a big mouth or one prone to flapping. That true?"  
  
"Yes sir." He was less embarrassed to admit it, fearful, yes, but more fearful of what would happen if he didn't. Someone, somewhere, was always reporting. Everyone knew. You just didn't  _say_  and this was proof; how else would Einar know outside the few times he'd personally witnessed Yngvi's failings? Yngvi was, after all, personally below noting in the grand scheme of Einar's life unless the cock-up was on the large scale and mercifully none of them had been. Only embarrassments. Enough to shame him. To stain his record. To serve as reminders for as long as necessary, to be hurled at him again and again if he didn't do it himself.  
  
"Well, be that as it may, some of us do need talkers and we might find a use for that mouth of yours. You're not too terrible a lad to look at either once you grow into yourself. Snorri, well, you might be able to stick him behind a stall or some other operation if needs must, and well we always name some of them Jim because they're ten-a-penny in the end. Gunnar? He's a clever one, keeps his head own but stands out for what's in there. Erna's got time ahead to see if it'll be the making or breaking of her but she'll have her uses, and Pernille ended up as our smuggled in songbird. No business to be here but sometimes a bird does find its way, you understand." Yngvi nodded. He was probably meant to. He knew all of that anyway about his friends, or most of it, but it was strange to hear just how much Einar  _did_  know about all of them and their educations. "You on the other hand…well there might be something to do with you. Stand up for me now."  
  
Yngvi almost fell out of his seat in his haste, straightening his shirt as if that'd be what made any difference in Einar's evaluation of him, a hand-me-down same as everything else he'd ever worn, stained and patched to make do before it finally fell to pieces or he outgrew it, tossing whatever remained for the younger ones to squabble over. Einar took his measure of him as he fought to remain still. To not curl his hands into fists. To not even wriggle his toes since he favoured light, thin boots, not heavy stompers others did that were suited to miners or welders or dwarves from the ancestral lands their lot had left behind a good few generations back. For the most.   
  
Einar gestured for him to sit. He tried not to throw himself back down, unsure if he succeeded at it or not.  
  
"Aye, a mite skinnier and shorter than I thought but that'll serve us well when you're ready for up top—" Yngvi's breath caught in his throat, heart pounding against his ribs at those words because of course he knew he was getting close, more or less; counting your age on two hands meant you were allowed up and out of the undercity and he could do that now, waiting for his chance at more than just passing talk of what Belnesse was truly like. "Tell me, can you hold two opposite things in your heart at once?"  
  
And Yngvi, having done that his whole life since even before he'd said it aloud to his brother in the dark, wretched and miserable, dared to smile as he looked up at his patriarch, father of fathers to him in the undercity of Belnesse, whose mark he'd borne behind his right ear all his life to proclaim him as belonging in every sense of the word.  
  
"Course I can. For the clan. For you."  
  
Einar leant forward over the desk, both hands clasped, a signet ring prominently displayed on the right. "We'll see lad, we'll see. You'll be working with Oda, find your way to her once breakfast is done. Get yourself gone now."  
  
With a hurried 'yes sir', Yngvi scampered out of the chair and office, disappearing so fast the door almost hit him on the arse on the way out.  
  


* * *

  
  
Lessons changed as they got older, duties heaped atop duties since the ranks thinned and fanned out, years beginning to blur; no longer the little ones past a certain point and instead just bodies to be piled in, still tasked with earning their keep as much as the rest but with  _other_  tasks. Not just the languages, the numbers, the history, the lockpicking, the weapons. No, they were split off according to what they were suited for. Shadows and sneaking. Knives in the dark. Trapmaking and tinkering. Particular nonsense with letters. Music and instruments. Alchemy and potions. Gunnar a sight for mealtimes now for Yngvi much as the rest of their little group, for passing on the way, for the few times they might sluice down or dunk their heads and rags in a bucket for the bare essential to stave off unmentionable stinks and the sorts of things that'd build up, probably to cause more sickness and problems than were acceptable. Lice and fleas were, generally speaking, a human thing, an elf thing, a half-blood thing. Such things weren't to be tolerated in a tight-knit clan like their own. It spoke of weakness. You could be filthy, but there were limits. Aunts and uncles tended to be harsh enforcers of that now.  
  
As it was, he was reporting to Gunnar with his hand wrapped in clean, as such things were judged, rag, his arm held high above his head as instructed by a grinning Vibeke who'd slapped him on the back with pride.  
  
"Nasty piece you put together. Let it be a lesson, off you go."  
  
Maybe it had been to spare his ego (word was that before she had been an aunt, Vibeke had been a mother, and mothers weren't women of sentiment – who was down here – but they were more dedicated to keeping children alive and that probably stuck to you) or maybe it  _had_  been a smart sort of thing he'd been fiddling with before the mechanism had gone off suddenly, snapping down hard on the meat of his palm, enough that it had taken him, Vibeke, and a pair of pliers to lever it open to get his hand out of the biting teeth. It throbbed as he clamped the rag tighter about his palm, sure that the phantom trickle of blood was oozing down his wrist from the wounds with each beat of his heart as he finished his journey by throwing himself down on a crate to await what passed for healing.  
  
Today, for better or worse in this small sparsely lit space that was filled with strange smells that had his nose itching, it was his brother. Every day was a lesson for all of them no matter who showed up and his eyebrows darted in the direction of his hairline to see Yngvi sat waiting with a bloodied rag and explanation.  
  
"The trap was feistier than I reckoned it'd be, got sent here to see what you could do for it."  
  
Before Gunnar could say anything, there was a throat cleared in the background, both boys looking that way. It wasn't an uncle but an ancient on, moving surely as solid stone, a dwarf with skin that somehow had the look of ancient paper and weathered rock at the same time who plodded out of the back where he'd maybe been at one of the several tables that took up space, giving Gunnar a hefty shove forward that sent him stumbling. Yngvi seldom saw Gunnar in his alchemical garb now that he thought about it, with his hair all tied back, in a thick apron spattered with all manner of stains that had burnt and even eaten through the leather in places, gloves just as dark that went up past his elbows. (The gloves, Yngvi knew, weren't always a feature. Some things required a fine touch that gloves did not allow and there were burns covered in salves and bandages, the skin discoloured for days or even weeks hidden away beneath those gloves, that skin cracked and hot to the touch sometimes. It'd have him shifting restlessly in the night to find a way that didn't jostle them badly.)  
  
"Well Gunnar m'lad, I think you've a thing or two you said you were working on that might be of use here."  
  
"Couldn't I—" Before Gunnar could finish, a smack rang out faster than Yngvi would've credited for some so old as Reidar, cracking him hard across the back of the head with a sound that had Yngvi biting the inside of his lip. He refused to look away even as his mouth went wet and coppery, breath caught in his throat same as ever. Gunnar swallowed several times, took a deep breath, and nodded. "Sorry sir, I'll fetch them."  
  
At least he managed to give a shaky nod to Yngvi's sympathetic smile as the old dwarf was busy directing Yngvi to unwrap his hand, swearing under his breath as the cloth stuck to the ragged edges of the wounds where the teeth had caught the flesh and torn deep.  
  
"This is going to be shit, isn't it?" Yngvi groaned, already miserable because there was one downside to what he was good at in particular – what Hulda had recommended, what Einar had directed him to so talents would not be missed – and it was cuts, and scraps, and mishaps that necessitated frequent visits here for patching up as part of the lesson so fingers needn't be lost, so time wouldn't be lost without reason either, but it didn't change how much he hated it. And this was the worst he'd had it so far too. At least the patient going to say what they wanted, more or less, without a smack.  
  
"Oh these are little beauties," Reidar said with more glee than Yngvi thought strictly necessary as Gunnar returned with an armful of bottles, and bowls, and various sundries that Yngvi was slowly learning about because that was what a decent brother did before they fell asleep at night, same as Gunnar did with parts and mechanisms, and traps, stripping off the gloves with an air of finality after he'd set everything down. "I'll be watching if you need assistance. Or to hold him down."  
  
"Yes sir. Thanks sir. So, how d'you come by these exactly?"  
  
"Remember that trap I was telling you about before? The little one I think I can throw and it snaps shut?" Yngvi would've mimed it as he had before if he hadn't been clamping his good hand over the bloodied one now it was free from the cloth, the small fiddly mechanisms clear in his head. Not that the trap was small. As he continued, his brother pried his hands open, nodded quietly, and uncorked a brown bottle. "It's still big, I need to make it big just now to scale it all down and bigger parts are easier to come by, cheaper and all, anyway, the spring snapped, dunno if it was dodgy or had too much tension, my hand was still in it. Got told I was lucky my fingers weren't in the way."  
  
Gunnar poured something Yngvi assumed was water over his hand until it hit, until it hit and  _stung_ , his whole body trying to twist away from the terrible burning pain that lanced through every inch of open flesh. It took all his restraint and Gunnar's weight to hold him still, breathing hard through his nose throughout, legs kicking, heels hammering uselessly at the crate. It was the familiar sting they'd all come to know in childhood but it was a first from Gunnar's hand, a first in wounds so deep and it had managed to find every other nick, hack, and scrape in the surrounding flesh too without fail.  
  
"That hurts you shit," he hissed through his teeth, half-expecting an apology that never came. Today, of course, Gunnar was about his business and Yngvi wasn't someone to be apologised to, not about something so small as any of that.  
  
"I need to clean it out unless you  _do_  want to go losing fingers, maybe even the hand, who knows what muck there is in your gear and on your hands. Now, let me see how deep it went—" A magnifying took the place of the bottle, Yngvi's arm tugged forward from where he'd tried to jam it by his side tight by the elbow, Gunnar flashing him a dirty look. "What d'you make the teeth out of?"  
  
"Good and proper steel, earned it."  
  
To think how proud he'd been. Well, it did come before the fall.  
  
"S'why it cut so deep, it'll need stitched I think…" Gunnar trailed off, chewing his lip as he eyed the needle and thread as Yngvi's heart sank.  
  
Gunnar was good with the stuff in bottles. Brewing them up and all the ingredients but as for some more practical aspects…maybe that was why it'd be Yngvi. Practice on your brother and there'd never be a better time to really hone the skill so as not to make an arse of it. And if you  _did_  make an arse of it then who'd care much? Just a boy. Another stupid boy stupid enough to get himself in the sort of mess that required a stupid boy to get him out.  
  
Yngvi sniffed, offering out his hand. "Go on then, make it all pretty. People need to love my clever hands and they need to be just as they were don't you know. Can't have anything unsightly they'll go noticing."  
  
"Like your face isn't unsightly enough to stick out worse than a hand." Gunnar avoided the leg that Yngvi swung out his way with the ease of practice as well as the laziness with which it was swung. "You'll need to shut your mouth for a bit then, I know that's always been difficult for you brother."  
  
"Says the one who breathes out his."  
  
"I've got the needle and thread here, what happens if I forget what's a mouth and what's a hand?"  
  
" _Boys_!" Reidar's voice was a growl, cutting through their nonsense with enough of an aggrieved air to have them both snapping up ramrod straight. The time for mucking about had come and gone, at least Gunnar who was very much being judged for his efforts, unlike Yngvi who'd either be dispatched to other lessons or left to his own devices since his hands were the sort of precious commodity – relatively speaking – and investment enough that he'd be allowed time for healing. Probably. He imagined. Surely.  
  
Hopefully.  
  
If he'd been older – since Yngvi spent a little time with some of the older ones when they weren't running here, there, everywhere or assisting with lessons or lurking which they were perfecting in the presence of those younger than them who picked up the chores that appeared as surely as their elders disappeared – he'd have been given something to dull his pain. They'd told him about that and so had Gunnar because there were real scrapes they got into. Proper accidents. Some of them who weren't quite taking him under their wing because no one besides Hulda gave enough of a shit for that did at least teach enough to get young dwarves ready, and Erna who had the lessons about a darker sort of world, spoke of how it would eat a person up alive, crunch you all up, skin, bones, organs and all if a dwarf wasn't careful. They'd been bloodied in ways he hadn't. They knew. And Yngvi knew, at least, that there was going to be no reprieve for him but whatever place he hid himself away in. It wouldn't be the first time being stitched but it'd be the first time on his hands and even the dullest among them knew that when it came to the hands, the face, or the mouth, it always hurt ten times worse. He took a deep breath, tried (and failed) not to tense up.  
  
It hurt worse if you tensed up but all the same, he was scared, he couldn't help himself. Nothing against his brother.  
  
(Maybe, terribly, guiltily, a tiny something against his brother.)  
  
A candle made an appearance in the intervening moments, Yngvi having missed who'd brought it and that was when Yngvi looked away. Found himself staring sightlessly ahead at the stained walls. At all the papers pinned to them as they blurred, rotas or lists maybe, the what-have-yous of workspaces. He didn't jump at Gunnar's warm palm taking hold of his. He flinched instead. Hissed a breath loudly out through his teeth. Gunnar was saying words but he couldn't hear them, they were a roaring buzz in his ears that he nodded at for a long time, stopped, then nodded again, eyes darting to his hand then away again. When the stitching began both heels kicked back against the crates and he was made aware of the third party overseeing all of it, over and above his brother's head, the one holding the candle aloft, breathing heavily on Yngvi. Yngvi had to remind himself to breathe since no one else was saying anything and for once no words would come out but all he managed were sharp shallow breaths that left him dizzy or holding it until his head swam and it all came out in a huff before he gulped in a lungful that burned, leaving him much the same way. His other hand had gone loose, as if it couldn't grip anything and his legs hung limp with knees turned to so much jelly the way they might after a long hard sparring session. He kept staring ahead. Ignored the loudness in his ears. The heat rising up in him. The black spots on the edges of his vision.   
  
Mostly he thought of nothing, curled deep, deep, deep down somewhere else the way you just had to sometimes that no one had taught him to so maybe it was just in there, maybe it was that part of a dwarf that existed in the bones or deeper still because they'd all been miners and all once. Back before. Before folk had thought  _bugger that for a lark_  and sought prospects elsewhere. He didn't think about the pain in his hand but the pain throbbed brightly anyway, clawed him back as he tried to push it away.  
  
Sweat had his shirt clinging to his back by the time Gunnar had finished up. Yngvi's hand strangely tight when he gave the most tentative flex of his fingers to check that they were still there, still working, all of it tingling and almost aflame in places but he might've been imagining that. The heat was rushing out of him faster than one of his elders could bellow about shutting the door, stop letting the cold in, a cold that had him shivering, jaw clenched tight as if that'd stop his teeth from chattering.  
  
"Deep breaths lad." A great heavy palm clapped his shoulder, forcing his head up from where it had ended up down against his chest, a start that almost hurt from how hard he jerked upright. Yngvi didn't know Reidar well but he knew life down here well enough to know that this was a rare moment of tenderness extended to him. "Deep breaths, head between your knees, I'll get you a drink. It's always a shock but you're through it now, that's the main thing."  
  
"I've been stitched before—" Yngvi started, wondering why his voice sounded so far away before his chin dictated he do as he was told, dragging his whole head forward. Everything had a leaden weight to it, almost sickening waves washing over him.  _Stupid_ , he told himself  _Embarrassing. Stupid. People can see. People are going to talk about you, they're going to say-- The old man'll laugh about it--_  The droning rushed over him again making it harder to think about whatever it had been in the first place. The cup placed into his unstitched hand got his head up, held to his lips by Reidar who instructed him to take slow careful sips of something that turned out to be painfully sweet, puckering his whole mouth up.  
  
"Honeyed mead, favourite. Got it out the last delivery." Settling on the opposite crate from Riach, the ancient dwarf held a larger mug himself as Gunnar rattled around with a pestle and mortar, busy grinding up a mess of precious plants (a tiny fortune, he'd confessed to Yngvi several times, their worth vast sums neither of them could scarcely comprehend in truth) that gave off a pungent, but not entirely unpleasant, smell that threatened to turn his stomach.  
  
"Sweet things are good for shock," Gunnar added from Yngvi's elbow.  
  
Yngvi turned just enough to scowl at his brother, wishing he could push his hair off his sweaty face where it was clinging and sticking. He couldn't even when his face had gotten wet enough to have it sticking there and behind his ears. He settled on the sleeve. Probably smeared grime all over.  
  
"I'm not  _in shock_ ," he muttered sullenly around a sip. He wasn't sure if he was enjoying the mead or not. If it had been over dinner, a rare treat instead of some condolence for what he'd been through. "I'm not a baby."  
  
"You got your hand stitched and it was deep, it's a thing that happens to everyone." He glanced over Yngvi's head so much it was part of his lesson and Yngvi was making it worse the way he'd done since he'd arrived or he was trying to placate him which only made Yngvi want to slope off to some spot where no one would find him so he could curl up for a spell. Not that you could. Got yourself a reputation doing that, reputations being something you could ill-afford, at least at their age, unless you were brilliant, and even then that could easily be turned against you. Fickle business to be a clan dwarf in the Belnesse undercity. "It's fine, Yngvi, don't worry about it," he said then, definitely to Reidar: "Oh, we'll need more rosemary and comfrey soon."  
  
"I'll mark it down. Einar'll be thrilled about that one but needs must, maybe if we sent some of you lot out gathering instead…" Reidar trailed off with a shake of his head and a long swallow of his mead, throat working. The brothers shared a glance, Gunnar mouthing 'later' as he lifted a bowl, dipping his fingers in.  
  
Catching Yngvi's dubious look, he smiled. It wasn't a good encouraging smile. No one could pull that off with slimy looking goop on their fingers, slowly trying to drip off back into the bowl. "This'll help your hand heal up better and once I take the stitches out we'll see if it needs more. I can check it easy enough at morning or night but just now…" he peered down, nodding to himself, "yeah, decent layer of it then a bandage. Keep it dry."  
  
"Not a problem." Even Yngvi could manage that. And because they were brothers and the mead was making him want to giggle he jerked his head at the bowl. "Smells funny though, won't even tell you what it looks like."  
  
"How often d'you smell plants?"  
  
Yngvi didn't have a smart reply for that, sipped at the last of the honey mead, and tried – and failed – not to shudder at the cold, thick salve being smeared over tender stitched skin no matter how gentle Gunnar was being before it was bandaged tight. Trussed up worse than the meats he'd helped unload at times, fingers just about able to move but cumbersome. Still with all the feeling in them, not pulsing same as a bruise or jarred elbow or knee, not turning funny colours when he curled them under instruction.  
  
"D'you have to go report back now?"  
  
"Probably should so Vibeke knows how it is, show it off. See if there's anything I can do. Anything else to say?"  
  
"Just keep it dry. Don't do anything that might open your stitches. I mean your instructors will know, they've seen plenty. I'll check it at times that won't steal you away from lessons but that's you, free to go."  
  
"Cheers Gunnar." He hopped up, catching himself on the edge of the crate with his good hand when his legs wobbled traitorously for a second until they were back under him. "Thank you sir," he added respectfully with a nod of the head as deep as he dared in Reidar's direction, not wanting to send himself reeling.  
  
"Keep out of trouble, don't want to see you back here dipping into my stash for a good while you hear me? Away you go lad, I need this one back at work."  
  
That was all the dismissal Yngvi needed, weaving his way on unsteady legs or maybe it was the floor which in most places was little more than compacted dirt so how even could it be? Had he ever given it much consideration until now? Probably not. A good enough reason to keep his uninjured hand against the wall all the way back to the workshop he'd come from, head pulsing in time to his hand, puzzling over Gunnar's 'later' instead of the lingering shame that refused to go away no matter how hard he stamped on it.  
  


* * *

  
  
Everyone had wanted to come inspect Yngvi's war wounds which were the worst wounds any of them had managed to pick up so far in lessons that weren't broken bones (memorably the time Snorri's nose had been broken by Pernille during a spirited recitation of an elven ballad), staved fingers, nasty scrapes and such. Pernille's injured fingers from her instruments had long ago become old news. Erna had even been somewhat jealous not to have had the first serious injury given the path she was taking her first steps on. Training accidents inflicted on another were held as grudges for about as long as it took for the next lesson and a chance to knock the stuffing out of your opponent came about again. Gunnar's burns too had become boring because well, burns were burns, Gunnar, doesn't matter what they come from. But a having a  _trap_  - deadly, after all, was the aim of a trap, and none of them had any choice in the matter of learning how to disarm them for who knew what they might come across in the world they'd one day venture out into – slam shut on you, especially a cruel one. Especially one you yourself had devised. It was a cause for great excitement at the dinner table that night. No one minded much when Yngvi, buoyed by the way everyone had clamoured and bent close to him, had speared a sausage to act out how savagely he'd been bitten by his own device. Vibeke, who'd evidently been listening in, had called out that she'd be keeping the thing for when he'd be up to continuing work on it again, impressed by the speed of it all. Strange, to be the centre of attention, to be proud of himself. To want to hide as he had when Gunnar had been done with him.  
  
(Were they laughing at him? Had they been? Would they laugh later? What whispers had he missed? He couldn't help himself, a tiny voice nipping at his ear even as the smile left his cheeks aching before dinner was close to done.)  
  
It had done enough to turn his mood about and Gunnar had obviously done well because when he'd come to the table late enough that Yngvi had had to guard his plate, he'd been grinning, promising that yes everyone could look at the stitches when he checked them the next night, promise.  
  
Too many ups and downs for one day, Yngvi left tired out by the time he'd scrubbed and fallen into bed; all of them by now were old enough to have earned what passed for a bed (a lumpy mattress stuffed with whatever there was to stuff one with) rather than blankets on cold floors that the little ones or newest arrivals who hadn't already proved themselves prior to starting out on the bottom run now laid claim to – until Gunnar appear at his side instead of in his own bed.  
  
"Budge up," Gunnar said. Brothers didn't tend to ask. There was still a chill at night down here, blankets always thin, so sharing a bed wasn't exactly a strange circumstance if someone was willing to pair up but he had a look on his face that didn't promise sleep any time soon. Yngvi made room, lifting his bandaged hand up and out of the way until they both settled. Gunnar had brought his blanket at least and he tucked it about them both. "How's it doing?"  
  
"It's achy but better, not gushing blood or some horrid mess. You did good."  
  
"Cheers, Reidar was happy with everything so that was—I mean you're most important but—" Yngvi nodded, he understood. "I've never stitched up so much hand before and it's fiddly, even just the fleshy bit, it all moves y'know? You held still though so thanks. That's, um, that's a salve I came up with? I combined two recipes and some other stuff, I think it should work better."  
  
"Oh." Oddly touched, Yngvi bumped his forehead against Gunnar's in the half-light, the candles burning low as the last stragglers went about getting ready for bed. "You're good at that, people talk about it, I hear it when I'm going about, even the older ones who never have a good word for anyone 'cause that's what they're like. Berit, must've been Berit, the one who never stopped coughing? Heard her talking to Agnar about something you made for her and how it finally cleared up. She's breathing better now than she has in years."  
  
Gunnar's face was red, eyes crinkled at the corners the way they got when he was embarrassed but happy. His work was good stuff. Tricky business to balance out what healed and hurt the way it did and there was a surge of pride for his brother that he so often had that never blurred with jealousy, not once, never with Gunnar. Gunnar was his brother above all brothers no matter how it was supposed to go here, all of the shit about loyalty, the cautionary tale wrapped tight about them from the start.  
  
"So, thing is," Gunnar started in a quiet rush clearly wanting to move past the praise because who didn't squirm when it came to that? "Remember when I was putting the salve on? And I said we needed stuff?"  
  
"Yeah, you didn't even say later, just mouthed it? What was up with that?"  
  
"Reidar talks plenty 'cause there's all this time where you're just grinding plants or brewing things for hours at a time, cutting stuff up, just doing things where you talk and he doesn't get too many apprentices really. Not like where you are, no chance to do too much talking and more of us are good at trap making or weapon crafting or the like, or that's how it seems. That's where the bodies go. It's where we're needed most. But he's got me and I'm the first one in a bit so he talks, maybe he talks too much and says stuff he shouldn't and because I'm young he'll be thinking 'oh that's just a lad, he'll shut his mouth' but I've been bursting to tell you. Just didn't know how or when or why." The words poured out quicker than Gunnar usually spoke, feverish really, and there was a pang of sympathy: it was like listening to himself, he imagined, from the opposite side, and Gunnar had to put up with that plenty but for far less than this which sounded more interesting and important than Yngvi's petty prattlings about his worries and his doubts. "Reidar's  _old_. I mean even for someone as ancients as him he's bloody old Yngvi. He remembers before Einar was in charge of things, he says he remembers when Einar was young." Gunnar paused, mouth twisting this way and that, as if someone was pulling at it from the inside. "Youngish," he amended finally.  
  
"I can't imagine Einar as anything other than how he is now." Yngvi whispered, as if saying Einar's name would summon him but it was the truth: Einar was as he ever was in his mind, a solid figure in a well-cut coat, in his jewellery with his hair oiled and combed away from his face, beard neatly trimmed and fading up to stubble the closer it got to his cheeks, an authority never to be questioned. To even imagine that he'd once worked his way through the ranks as he undoubtedly had was beyond Yngvi. He wasn't sure if it scared him or not. After all, who did you have to be to start and what did you have to do to become the patriarch of the clan?  
  
"Same, but he was and I mean some things weren't that different from the sounds of it but I don't think we were always stuck down here all the time at our age, and getting things like herbs and other supplies wasn't as bad then. We'd get it ourselves. That was  _our_  job. I know the whole thing with Order changed plenty but not for us, no one gives enough of a shit about dwarves, that's human and elf business at the end of the day. Shouldn't have stopped us from getting out to go do that."  
  
Gunnar's eyes were wide in the telling as he lay alongside Yngvi who hardly dared to breathe. They both knew what awaited them and it wasn't flower picking. It was perhaps as far from that as they could get. He lingered on 'stuck' , turned it over and over, examined the ridges as he might a rare coin.  
  
He blew out a breath that ruffled Gunnar's hair on the thin pillow. "Why did we stop all that then?"  
  
"Not profitable." Flat, no-nonsense, just this side of resigned in a way that had Yngvi's heart clenching.  
  
"But you've told me how expensive plenty of your stuff is, unless you were pulling my leg 'bout that?" He gave his brother the out, sometimes you made a big deal out of everything. You wanted to just be the special one and spending money? It made you flash. Made you worthy automatically.  
  
"It is. It's not like there's much what grows down here that we can use," Gunnar's tone was that special  _as you bloody know_  and Yngvi was quick to nod in agreement, "so we need to buy it, trade for it, or go nick it when we can; it's all coin at the end of the day but Reidar sort of shuts up because that's a lot of what he's angry about or at least what he'll say to me. How's it balancing the books.   
  
"Thieving seeds themselves are easy just for the whole thieving seeds but people even if you describe them don't know 'em how you do for studying, even we need a good long look and you don't get that all times when you're thieving," Gunnar continued, less resigned, more irritated but not louder or softer, only faster and faster, the words racing to get out, "but stealing plants ain't a subtle thing. They don't know how not to damage them even if you tell them and s'not always possible and there's just…a whole thing."  
  
"Always balancing books," Yngvi repeated that part after a moment he deemed to be respectfully silent, lips pursed, hands relaxed since they were throbbing, especially the stitched one, and it wouldn't do to give Gunnar work now would it? "Hulda's sort of said things a bit like that."  
  
"Hulda knows different stuff doesn't she? She wasn't always part of this – our clan least, she joined up? I've heard that."  
  
"That's different." Yngvi paused. "We get them but they clam up, Reidar and Hulda, I don't know if there's no choice in it, or don't want to talk, or both? Won't or can't gets twisted about." Yngvi knew that one enough, and right now what him and Gunnar were doing was getting to that even if they were children. "But…d'you think the food stuff is part of it? Meat costs—can't remember what it was last time but it's up there, it's why we're always figuring out how to keep rats out of what we've got. There's a meetings just for ideas for that."  
  
"We used to be sent off hunting.  _Hunting_. Some people still do, bet Hulda does if you asked her or she'll know the ones who do but it was part of our basic lessons. We weren't stuck down here 'til we were old enough it was—" Gunnar's face closed off. Yngvi was used to seeing it happen only not right when he was face to face with his brother when they were just talking together and had the sensation as if someone had just gone and emptied a bucket of cold water down his back, only able to watch as Gunnar clamped his mouth shut and rolled over onto his back. Yngvi groped for his hand, finding it sweaty. "Sorry," he managed, and his voice was tight.  
  
"S'fine, you've listened to me how many times?"  _You're my brother_ , Yngvi thought but didn't add on since that wouldn't help in the here and now. "It's hard."  
  
(An understatement but there was a time for saying it how it was and a time for trying to shrug it off.)  
  
"Yeah. I just…I get things are how they are, we survive here, we live here, it's the way of life that keeps us all alive against everything out there when it could be so much worse. I don't see how being angry about it changes things, I reckon it snarls you up inside but sometimes I am. Now I know. And I get it, Yngvi, get how it's been for you all this time."  
  
"It's not all the time." The words sounded hollow to Yngvi's own ears as he said them, rolling onto his back in turn to stare at the damp uneven ceiling above them where people were still carousing and going about their lives that'd take them into the small hours of the morning, a whole other shift they weren't privy to as of yet.  
  
"Yngvi I'm your brother. I know your face."  
  
"Shut up," Yngvi retorted without malice. "I'm tired."  
  
"It was a big day," Gunnar agreed. "We should sleep. See you in the morning, don't let the rats bite."  
  
"There's more of you for them to chew first."  
  


* * *

  
  
When it came to blows between Virene and Aubin the way it had between the nations since the idea of warring over your borders and all the promise that might have been there, all that land, all that water, all those precious wonderful resources, it came as it always had throughout history, same as Belnesse morning dawned with foul fog rolling in off the tide, with chokedamp, with the foundries wheezing to life. It was always the little people, and the hungry people, and the poor people easily overlooked who found themselves pressed, and squeezed, and ground. As if they were to be turned to the very wine both nations prided themselves on Snorri happened to be learning histories of to better forge them successfully. News of the war came quickly to the undercity because there weren't many places for most people to go but down. Belnesse, after all, didn't have all that much space for new folk being a great sprawl of city as it were, bodies packed tight save for where the money was. Down was where it had packed the destitute and the outcasts already, squeezed them in tight. If you couldn't afford a house or a flat, you had a hovel. If you couldn't afford a hovel you carved out a space best you could, and fought for it amidst the clan, the thieves, everyone else who allied themselves together. Dwarves banded together by nature perhaps, or some strange calling in their blood that wasn't to be addressed, elves mingling in pockets amidst the humans unless they were of the nature to keep a bloody bare-toothed distance, with a few small strange mongrel packs between them.  
  
Always the loners to be watched out for with their lean and hungry eyes.  
  
Dwarven children, even Einar's children with his the mark of his clan tattooed behind their right ear, were warned of all these people when the influx came. Bitterness grew in those people, a festering malignance that poisoned not only body but the mind so Einar said, and Yngvi had to agree when he skirted past newcomers. When the thieves came for a meeting about terms.  
  
The thieves were mostly elves, some humans, and probably the ones who were a mix of both and wouldn't thank you for calling them by what you saw when you looked at them. Unlike the clan, the thieves of Belnesse weren't entirely confined to the undercity but who had the same authority that Einar had in their own leadership, at least as far as the young dwarves could tell from lurking. Young dwarves became champions of it. You'd have a clout around the ear, a well-skelped arse, all the worst sort of chores, and whatever the aunts and uncles and – depending on the severity of your lurking- mothers and fathers might devise as a punishment. Thieves in Belnesse were everywhere, of course, same as there were other dwarves, other criminal groups up to whatever they could turn a hand to but this was the group who were organised. Who other thieves might still find themselves answering to. And there was always protection to being in a group. To belonging. In their sleek dark leathers, at least in the undercity for formal meetings with the head honcho. The thieves and the clan had belonged to Belnesse for as long as there had been a Belnesse, all of them able to slink in the shadows as if they'd been born to it, something Yngvi knew Erna envied for how hungrily she watched them, naked and open any time they appeared.   
  
There were never children amongst their number but they existed. Probably the same reasons children didn't go to important clan meetings though.  
  
Times such as these though and all those who worked in the dark or in opposition of the law had to come together when the guards and the Order would doubtless be cracking down on them, and for all that they did hunt the same prizes or keep out of each other's way, it was important now more than ever to shore all of that up. To make sure that it wasn't any of them thrown in the fire.  
  
Scuffles broke out. Orders were laid down and adhered to. Your knuckles were to be made of iron and spikes, no longer simply bone. Bone made a delicious, rich, marrowy broth. Clung to the ribs it did – smile, doesn't matter where it comes from, don't think about it.  
  
It came down to that which had been taken out of mouths a hundredfold before Yngvi had been able to count that high, but by virtue of him still being present for all of it he'd taken more out of the mouths of brothers and sisters no longer there so that was that, you didn't dwell on it. ( _Don't dwell on it_ , repeated time and time again as necessary, louder now with the press of bodies down in the dark, stinking the place up worse than ever.)  
  
Then they started creeping out of bloody  _Riach_ , that feral wilderness of a country, so it went in Belnesse, and altogether a more volatile mix. Gunnar had cleverer words for it that Yngvi could remember but it was like the practice room for traps where they changed the layout every single time, as if there were a front here too same as Virene or Aubin or Riach or wherever the fighting was spreading about to, and then all the stuff about the Order – something that had  _never_  mattered down in the Undercity – got dragged in too. The Order had existed in Belnesse for…well Yngvi didn't know, he'd never cared much for that part of history, only that the Order  _was_ , had been for long enough that their ancestors had learnt to profit from their holy war stemming from spreading the faith, but the bits about magic went up and over his head. Not that it mattered now. What mattered was that the Order was here. That faith had carved itself an ugly space, a ragged wound that wept and festered down in the dark, fervent hives out of Virene and Aubin hissing about their singular God ( _what a wonderful scam those humans have invented_ , Einar had declared, loud enough that it wasn't simply overhearing by accident, but not so loudly that it was a declaration) and them out of Riach either brought that or a resistance to it since they were a wild folk. Wild folk with their strange many gods.   
  
All it meant was knights thrown into the mix with armour, with weapons, with scrutiny. And Yngvi who'd grown up beneath so many eyes at least knew how to deal with that. Not that he or the rest enjoyed it but he did. And so did the thieves. And so did the elves because no matter where you went, the elves tended to harbour more suspicion than the rest but humans? Resentment built up in them, a bitter ugly growth. And that spelled trouble.  
  
Nasty, all of it. It had Yngvi grinding his teeth, wanting them all gone, wanting them  _out_.  
  
And then, of course, there was less and less to go about when you were sent out on errands – errands that took at least twice as long for stepping over boundaries into contested territories where they kept tearing up and redrawing the boundaries every night was a trial, where there was always someone to interrogate your business or try to demand inspection though fortunately Yngvi had a fast mouth, fast hands, fast enough everything to give them the slip. Until there was a human and a knife and whatever paltry thing there had been in his hands, halfway into his satchel.  
  
It hadn't even been a big rat. Maybe an overgrown mouse. Or maybe a rat had gone at it with a mouse and they'd had a misshapen creature that was destined to find its way to the dwarven cooking pot as misshapen unwanted things so often did.  
  
Instead there was the ground going out from under him but instead of down Yngvi went up, an unsettling experience, hoisted high enough to be dangling by the throat courtesy of a rangy man with hair scraped badly away from his scalp. Yngvi could still see the grazes. Something about lice at the docks now, even the women were having their heads shaved, so he'd heard, it'd explain the scarves and shawls some of them were draped in. Dwarves altogether were more meticulous about the whole thing, who wanted shave off a beard or head of hair you'd spent years cultivating?   
  
"You'll gimme that dwarf boy if you know what's good for you." The hot breath blasting his face was foul but Yngvi couldn't turn his head away when such a large hand had him by the throat the way he'd had the rat. Still had. A death grip. He  _couldn't_  let go.  
  
"I won't. It's mine. There's rules 'ere." It was hard to speak but he strove for defiance, all the years of what he'd wanted to say to the elders, all that unfairness coming out now in the face of this man. It was foolishness but it was the truth; there were rules, possession and the law and wanting, taking, having, and over and above all that, running through all the undercity pure as a seam of silver through stone was that to touch what was Einar's was to risk his wrath. Yngvi might not matter overly much but to take food out of the cooking pot, out of all their mouths? That'd get his blood up. Even to hurt one of his own when you were so far beneath him would be a damning slight.  
  
"Bugger your rules you little mongrel, no one'd give two shits if I gutted you. Who'd come running you? You'll give me that and piss off."  
  
"It's mine and ours and not yours. None of this is yours." The hand wasn't around his throat at least, not yet, so he could still protest, fruitless at it seemed. Where were the rest of them? He shouldn't have managed to get separated but that was the problem; you weren't meant to head off alone but it happened. There were so little food you had to. You had to say yes to one thing and ignore it if everyone wanted to eat especially when the groups getting it were the least likely to be fed if they failed.   
  
Being held up as he was came with one strange advantage, if it could be thought of that way: no one would see that his legs were shaking and that his knees had turned to jelly.  
  
"You think I care?" Something pricked his belly. His hands moved without him realising he'd moved them, a white-hot flash of pain that didn't quite register and even though it cut off the air to his lungs for a heat-stopping moment he dared to crane his neck down to see what had happened. It wasn't a punch. It was worse. He knew that. He just needed to know what and he saw a shiv, a crude ugly thing made from whatever could be scavenged, easily hidden up a sleeve that pressed into his belly through his thin coat, thinner shirt. His whole stomach jumped and his breath hiccupped. "You'll be in the pot too far that. Not much of you but better'n rat."  
  
He couldn't swallow, suddenly terribly afraid, more afraid than he could remember being, too afraid to even curse the stubbornness that had come over him as his legs went from jelly to water, the ground hitting him hard – when had he been dropped? – as a hot dragging pain passed at the same time. Had he been hit again? No. No that wasn't him howling. He couldn't even get enough breath for that, his was all stuck in his chest, rapid shallow gasps in and none out.  
  
" _Name_." A low voice was growling, another dwarf bent over his assailant who was bend double on the ground beside Yngvi, bleeding, jaw clenched. "I said,  _name_."  
  
"Fin-Findlast." It came out on a wet ragged gasped followed by – Yngvi was too busy trying to get his arms under himself so he could sit upright so the world didn't spin as madly – pressing a hand at his belly to guess at the sound. Too busy breathing or trying to. Why wouldn't his body just cooperate?  
  
"Don't try to run off Findlast, we'll be stopping by to chat."  
  
A soft tread approached and a familiar figure crouched before him, bloodied blades wiped clean and put away as Hulda tugged Yngvi's hand away from where the blood was blooming through his clothes. "Stubborn boy," she admonished fondly, sadly. "Let's get you home. Can you walk?"  
  
"Yes," he whispered. He wasn't sure about that but he wanted to be away,  _needed_  to be away as he dared to glance back at the man, at Findlast, who was now curled on himself, clutching one knee, one ankle. The knee was bloodied, the ankle skewed at an awkward angle. His stomach rolled enough that he looked away, leaning on Hulda as she helped to hoist him up, clamping his hand over his belly again as he staggered. "How did—"  
  
"Luck. You've some strange bloody luck, ran into—" Hulda's jaw went tight and she shook her head, braids swinging. "Never mind, we need to get you back and have Reidar look at this."  
  
"Hulda." He tried, plaintive. Scared.  
  
"Hush. Concentrate on keeping your feet and that hand clamped tight."  
  
"Hulda I—"  
  
"Do as I say boy!"  
  
(His entire  _chin_  wobbled. Hulda had never been angry with him.)  
  
His jaw shut with a click, tongue caught on his teeth and flooding his mouth with coppery blood, face flushed red hot even as he turned shivery all at once, sweating through his shirt, his head swimming. Without Hulda he'd have stood no chance of getting back, he couldn't even tell what direction they were going.  _Idiot_ , he thought to himself as they made their slow fumbling way.  _Great lumbering idiot, she saw, they'll see, everyone is going to know--_  
  
They were some of his last real thoughts for a long while.  
  


* * *

  
  
There was neither hide nor hair of Hulda for days. None of them, really, for days, a skeletal operation though Yngvi was laid up for a greater part of it per Reidar's instruction who'd said it wasn't about not trusting Gunnar's hand but about what was right; stitching holes in your brother's belly wasn't good and right. Training didn't even come into the matter. So Gunnar fetched and carried, held Yngvi's hand, made him sip small beer, and something else that let him sleep through in a dreamless muddle. Brothers and sisters came visiting with the news that all lessons were excused for now. That something was brewing. Pernille had taken to settling in a corner to practice her lute, snatches of song that Yngvi drifted in and out of, never hearing the whole thing.  
  
Yngvi pretended to sleep when it suited him and Reidar chased all but Gunnar out. His brother who sifted through the gossip for what would keep Yngvi's attention until he was well enough to be up and about, slow and steady.  
  
So it happened that Yngvi healed through the undercity going to war with their new occupants, the thieves joined alongside the clan and established tributes to carve out territories anew, to remind everyone who'd come down into the dark who it belonged to. Who it always would belong to and that they'd make their peace with it or it'd be made for them. Even the Order crept up top. So Jim told him.  
  
They ate well when Yngvi came back to the table and Einar's eyes settled heavily upon him with his cup raised in praise. Hulda wouldn't look at him and the small beer tasted worse than anything from the slack tub ever had.  
  


* * *

  
  
In the cool storeroom sorting through the recent delivery that had come in for all various parts of their entire operation both in the undercity and beyond, doing as best he could, Yngvi half-turned at the rough scrape of the door opening, not expecting company when it was his turn to get through it all by the end of the day. Too early for a meal, his plate of hard track, peppered cheese, and garlic chicken livers (incentive to work hard on sorting duty was the good food for it, to be plied in satisfaction as you toiled away on a dull, thankless job, though maybe this was a little extra for him, something to sort through  _later_ , Einar a grim confusing spectre to think on) still to be picked at with his mug of cider half-full. The lamps flickered as he heaved a third wheel of cheese probably the weight of a small child – not that Yngvi could be certain, he wasn't the kind to go hoisting children about – into the corner for all that would be re-sold as whoever it was came to join him, clearing their throat.  
  
"Just a minute!" Unable to see and with the smell of cheese up his nose, sweatier than the bedrooms in the height of summer, he wheezed, setting it down precariously atop a pile about to be taller than him before he turned to spy Hulda leaning against the wall. It was the first he'd seen of her since Einar's moment of triumph, almost staggering back at the sight of her here as if he'd imagined it even as she helped herself to a chicken liver off his plate. "Hulda!"  
  
"Not pulling anything to do that is it?" She asked, not looking at his face but as his belly where the blood had stained his shirt. She was blinking.  _Do you see it the way I do? Do you see the man?_  He'd tried asking Gunnar what had come of it his shirt but his brother had kept his mouth shut tight about it.  
  
He imagined the same would come of asking Hulda about his attacker.  _Findlast. His name was – is? – Findlast._  
  
"You missed it healing up." He tried and failed to keep the bitterness from out. And he really did try. Hulda was always good, always kind, always funny, and willing to teach him, and she'd put in a good word all that time back, and of course she'd saved his life but it remained that she'd said nothing, had ignored him, and it was hard to keep that from hardening his heart when it was tender as it was. A little bold too. She'd been angry. Somehow he could remember that. "Doesn't ache now unless someone gets a hit in during practice and they get a scolding for it, something about how it's not right, might do me worse if it isn't let to heal proper. It's all healed outside so I don't get it but Reidar says things inside we can't see are still mending."  
  
"He's right about that; Reidar's known his business since long before I came here. Your brother has a good teacher; we'll do well for it."  
  
Yngvi nodded, not sure what to say to any of that if there was anything to, sometimes – he'd learnt plenty, often by aid of a smack – silence was better, and went back to his seat and his work, parts destined for the workshop that he could easily sort by touch, without looking.  
  
"I was angry when I saw you, no reason not to tell you that, you're not stupid." Hulda didn't bother with the silence and maybe that was something else he liked about her too; she knew when he needed a thing pried out of him and when it'd snarl that knot in him up worse. "Scared too since you're—you're just a thing don't and don't start, it's the truth-" her hand was up to forestall his arguments, punctuated instead by metal rattling in wooden trays, his fingers working without much thought on his end. "None of you should've been that way and them on our turf, well, that was on us for not having that set out before they flooded in. Lessons learnt after our hands got burnt.  
  
"That wasn't all but you were hurt and I wasn't in my right mind to go explaining it. You deserved better.  _You_ ," an emphasis he didn't understand that had him slowing as Hulda came closer to sit alongside him, a hand on his arm enough to insist that he face her (he'd been sorting through the parts more furiously, he hadn't noticed until he spied the red indents on his fingertips as he did), "deserve better. Can you remember what you said to him?"  
  
Yngvi reached for his cider with his left hand, sharp apple on his tongue. It pressed against him in strange ways now, the air closer where it shouldn't be in this cold room, as if his breath was being stolen, heart starting to hammer, and his cup clattered when he set it down clumsily. "About how what I had was mine? Not his? Rules maybe? Sorry I don't—it gets—" He waved his hand, head fuzzy, pulling away from her. It was real again the way it had been at first. When the nightmares had happened. When there had been a man in the dark with a knife, waking to a pain in his belly, gasping, trembling, Gunnar urging him to wake up with gentle hands. All those other eyes peering in the dark.  
  
"Loyalty can get you killed." Hulda said it softly enough he had to strain his ears to catch it, the scars on her face twisting. There was a fresh one, he noticed now, running down her jaw to her neck by hear ear on the left side.  
  
"But we're—"  
  
"You know the stories."  
  
His mouth twisted and his chin wobbled, Hulda's outline blurring. "I don't understand, I didn't know why you wouldn't say anything to me, you wouldn't look at me. You were angry." He paused, continuing softly. "Don't be again?"  
  
Hulda sighed again and nodded to the room about them. "This'll…this'll take a bit. I'll give you a hand while I go, how's that sound?"  
  
"Good, that's—yeah that'd be good." It was painful how eager he sounded, or surely that had to be how she'd hear it, and there wasn't much to be done stealth wise for wiping a hand over his face but at least he could smile afterwards, shaky as he was. "I missed you. Not that I see much of you like, but still, missed you."  
  
"I missed you too. Let's to it, you might get away sooner, find some idle time for a change."  
  
Hulda was the one to rise, taking the heavier lifting while Yngvi turned back to the parts, his heart no longer racing the longer he sorted through them, breathing coming easier too. He'd never asked about it. Some part of him knew it was stupid to do it, dangerous, a whiff of weakness to have folk come sniffing and snapping more than happened already whenever there was a chance to get a leg up and over someone else.  
  
"I wasn't born on the surface." That wasn't new, meriting only a grunt to say he'd heard her. "A lot of us come up from where we started from, down beneath the rock and stone and it's—it's like everywhere. And it's like nowhere. Bit like the undercity is another side of Belnesse I s'pose and there was the line trotted out time and time again: war means trade, trade is good. But you've seen war now, haven't you? You've seen what comes of it when they go flooding away. And trade's a war all its own.  
  
"So folk've been leaving. And this started going back long enough ago I can't remember a date, maybe no one rightly does. All that stuff over gods or a God that the humans mostly like to go on about. That's one thing Einar's always been in the right about: it's the best scam anyone's ever come up with because those coffers have never been so full and you've never seen a fire so brightly lit than the one in the eyes of true believers. Even the destitute go giving all their coin thinking they'll get better."  
  
"What's des-destitute?" He asked, sounding it carefully.  
  
"So poor you've barely the shirt on your back. The Order ends up looking out for them in the end so you see how it goes? That sort of twisted up loyalty?"  
  
Yngvi nodded carefully with heart and stomach both sinking. Hulda heaved down a heavy sack, grains or flour maybe, they both sounded about the same but she could toss them instead of dragging them slowly across the floor the way he had to. He envied that strength.  
  
"So when there's a war," Hulda continued, barely sounding out of breath, "and well, there's always a war isn't there? They've got their holy war, the Order, wanting to sweep all the terrible old ways clean from the face of Brae Saoidh no matter how long it takes and they've the coin to pay for it. They come to us, same as Virene and Aubin and Riach do when they need weapons and armour forged good and proper. For cruel, terrible things that heads bend together above the table to craft to better carve the world up between 'em. But it's not the ones getting paid by those humans," (it was humans profiting, not elves, never elves, probably never even some with a bit of elf in them), "who bleed and break for it. It's us. All of us down there as it chokes us. Bleeds us dry. Breaks us. Twists us. And if your trade isn't valuable then there's less to be done. Less and less and less and you're one rung above a begging bowl. Some folk might not mind some dwarven work but it's a matter of what you can get your hands on down there and plenty up here'll favour their own before they'll favour us. Unless it's to make a point."  
  
Begging was shameful save for grifting. Even the simplest child knew that. To think of where they'd come from as far removed as Yngvi knew himself to be from it doing that turned his face red. It was a threat. A curse. Softened some cruel blows because however bad it was, you weren't having to resort to something so low.  
  
Hulda's voice was lowered as she spoke, as if it pained her to speak, distant even as she worked so close to him. Yngvi kept his head bent to his task but if it was respect that lowered his eyes down and to the front or fear of what he might see, he wouldn't have been able to say. The sweat on the back of his neck told a more honest story.  
  
"Not many things grow underground, least not many things worth eating or stitching or feeding the beasts – not a great many beasts all that worthy of eating either though there's a fair few that'd take a chance at eating or killing you - so there's trade, there's always trade, and I don't know what begat what, that's all up and over my head. Maybe there were always markets for folk desperate enough and enterprising – resourceful types with some initiative in 'em – or it got bad enough when folk were leaving that it flowed back. Because we couldn't all survive on our own. Nothing can."  
  
"So that's where it all began? All of this? All of us?"  
  
"You know your history." Only Hulda was making it sound like he didn't and Yngvi had doubted bits of it before, there'd been what Gunnar had said about what Reidar had said, and he dumped a handful of nails in a jar, screwing the lid tight. His scar got pinched in it, drawing a wince.  
  
"It was different up here before. Depends who runs the shop." He had to take a hasty swallow of his cider after daring to say even that.  
  
"As above, so below." She sniffed, taking a moment to stretch where something popped but that was what happened when you were sorting inventory. Stock-take as it were. "It crept in, came back down. Some of it legitimate because there were better rates – after all we're dwarves same as you, why would the odds be as they are for the humans? – but there's always coin being made. And people could see that it was folk like them who were doing well for themselves. Thought 'I might be like that' when it was going to bed cold. Losing limbs and coughing blood for war efforts not yours since it wasn't  _our_  was we were funding or fuelling or fighting. In it crept. And it—"  
  
Hulda broke off and Yngvi recognised the catch before the tears came, the desperate effort to stop it, trap it however you thought you might that was part and parcel of it all. He hadn't thought you cried as an adult. He thought it stopped at some point. Now that he knew it didn't, not completely at least, he didn't know what to do with it except to set it to one side. There was enough on his plate as it was.  
  
"All they ask," she managed once he'd thrust the remaining cider at her, daring to look up at her stricken face, ashen enough to have all the scars standing out, fault lines, mountain ranges, both their hands closed about the cup at once, "is your loyalty Yngvi. All they ask is  _everything_. Can you understand that? I need you to try for when you're older; I need you to start now before it swallows you up because it's not different. It's not. It's  _not_."  
  
With that she sank to the floor, leaning her back against the desk with her mouth shut tight until the door scraped open with more food for Yngvi that became a hurried second trip for Hulda who would say no more of it again. Not for years. Years when Yngvi had been and gone and come back and pressed a taller stubbled face to hers in silence.  
  
Now there was only silence and the sounds of the storeroom until they were done, Hulda who gathered their dirty dishes to take them back so she could send him off for a few hours on his own that he wouldn't have had, hours where he turned the conversation over and over in his mind as he might a well-worn penny until he knew every bump and ridge but still felt it slipping through his fingers.  
  


* * *

  
  
(Parts and pieces he told Gunnar. Slotted them in against Reidar's words. Against the undercity and all that had gone on when Yngvi was abed.  
  
None of it a pretty picture but what were they to do with it? No one had left instruction but Einar after all.)  
  


* * *

  
  
The thing about trapmaking was that for Yngvi and the rest involved it meant long stretches of training where the all but the fingers and hands had to be still, moving as fast as the mind. As it turned out, Yngvi enjoyed that. Enjoyed it more than lessons spent learning the dwarven tongue that hadn't been left behind despite time and distance, and those of Riach, Virene, Aubin, and the places between and beyond, smatterings of trade tongues between that were more useful. They went off to practice those with relish and gusto since the undercity had never quite cleared out again. No one had written down the trade tongues, something to do with how it was pointless to do that, defeating the purpose but how was that of much interest to young dwarves? All of that was dull stuff, exhausting, things Yngvi didn't see the point in anyway when it was  _up there_  even if there were a whole bunch of them down here with them now and for the foreseeable future. There was the history too, oh there was never-ending history crammed down their throats too.   
  
Somehow fighting amongst each other was how the world went. Even natives seemed to have forgotten their own history and the near-mystifying rules of their languages as it turned out and lessons frequently devolved into a chorus of young dwarves squabbling or pestering their tutors before books or hands were slammed down on desks to silence them.  
  
You had to know enough to get by, they were told whenever the complaints stacked up, Belnesse and dwarves thrive on trade so how else are you ever meant to know what's going on if you don't know what's being said or what's happened about you?  
  
(Yngvi privately thought that meant they just had to understand a thing, it didn't meant you had to go parroting it back but it was usually worth hearing how Jim's nose mangled some of the stranger vowels out of Virene and Aubin when he was called upon.)  
  
These days they'd grown out of scavenging, now for the little ones. To an influx of new ones out from the dwarven places who were earning their place if they had no skill to speak of, that and maybe the humbling of it, grouped alongside such young children without anything they could do about it. Still, it didn't translate to free time for Yngvi's group but it was less frantic. Less frenetic. You had time.  
  
Teachers were able to watch you more.  
  
Including when Einar hauled you out for special interest as he had which Yngvi should've seen coming but he'd been too busy keeping his head down, flushing under what praise had come, taking the odd moment of free time to muck about with their little gang, getting stories out of Hulda who tucked him under her arm and snuck him stronger brews than he was entitled to at the communal table. A set of eyes landing on you for too long got to be a dangerous thing at times and this was the third time where Einar had clapped his upon Yngvi, a little mouse before the mean mangy ferals lurking, ready to pounce.  
  
A hand extended, the rings glinting, the coat new and fine leather with no wear to it, runes cut in the lapels with a collar of some russet fur. Yngvi had read about the animal in a book once or twice – how wasteful to have frivolous pictures in their books - and it looked very grand about him as he was ushered out and away from Vibeke and the rest to the awaiting gauntlet.  
  
Business as usual really but this rather more literal a gauntlet than he'd expected upon being swept out and away from the workshop. Heads had bowed upon his entrance and Yngvi, hands in a trap, couldn't meet his eyes, stared at his steel-capped boots as a heavy hand landed on his thin shoulder and commanded him; you looked at your father in the eye when he spoke, and Einar was father of fathers, no matter his age.  
  
"I'll be taking this one with me if that's all well and good."  
  
"Of course sir," Vibeke had said and that had been that.  
  
So now the gauntlet beckoned which was a room of coats and thin wires, thin as spider webs from what he could see and he'd heard  _of_  it as he glanced up as Einar who gave him a shove forward. No instruction. A test then as if living wasn't test enough.  
  
Pockets to be picked because Yngvi was small. Because Yngvi had a charming face. Because Yngvi had quick hands and Hulda was a smuggler who'd spoken of him, he'd been proven as loyal now, because, because, because—  
  
(He should've listened harder to what Hulda said but he hadn't or couldn't. Worried the little thing in an inside pocket she'd given him instead.)  
  
The aim was simple enough from what Yngvi could see: pick the pockets of the coats without setting off any of the bells except for the part where Einar was watching, where there was  _always_  someone watching so that meant it couldn't just be about stopping the bells from ringing. All the quiet from trapmaking disappeared, the noise back in his head as he chewed his lip, worrying at dry skin that had always been there, the hack right down the middle that he might as well have been born with. There were crowds in the undercity these days and there would be far greater crowds when he would be finally permitted to up, up, up amongst the whole of Belnesse proper as it were so it was to make it all less obvious. To not look like a pickpocket. So maybe, he thought as his first attempt at silence had him bumping into a coat, startling an apology out of him, that was the point. Not everyone could be Erna after all.  
  
"'Scuse me sir, my mothers say I've bigger feet than I've any right to." It sounded stupid, prattling on to a coat in front of Einar but it did what he'd hoped in covering the sound of the bell and when Einar clapped both hands he didn't look angry in any way that Yngvi could tell as he stopped, though not before he had the purse tucked away, himself safely extracted back, ducking and weaving through haphazard rows – all the better to fake a crowd – to Einar's side.  
  
"Now  _that_  is some initiative and that little spark I worry sometimes that we've lost." Einar's smile reached his eyes, a true warmth in his voice if Yngvi was any judge of such things and he flushed to have it directed at him as he handed over his prize.  
  
(That was never his to keep, nothing was.)  
  
"Thank you sir."  
  
"Now that mouth of yours, that can get you into trouble. No shame to admit to it, we all have them, we're all liable to say the wrong thing, too much or too little, but for you, well, maybe you're learning that if you can't keep it shut," he caught Yngvi under the chin, not a blow but all the same Yngvi had to lock his knees to keep himself from flinching away from it, locked his jaw too, "then you'll put it to use to keep you alive and steer you out of trouble. Clever enough to give them ample distraction. Not without risk I'll admit but deflection…it can be a smart play. If it's to be your play."  
  
A heavy pause followed, weighing down the air around them as Einar awaited Yngvi's answer. Yngvi wouldn't rush this. Not now. He fought to keep from scuffing his feet as the words came at last. "I don't reckon I can be silent as thieves proper can, y'know, I didn't get those lessons for a reason and it's a bit late for it. And I'm good with m'hands but…not like them either so I talk. A lot. And my mouth can go. So if I tell them a good lie that's got a bit of truth they'll be thinking about that, won't they? That's how it works. Good lies at least."  
  
"You've been paying attention then, seems the new generation isn't lost at all, Caspar might even weep to hear it. Well, at least from what I've heard of you and your brother. Go again." Einar was still  _smiling_ , shoulders back, sounding not at all like any of Yngvi's teachers did even when it was someone like Vibeke who definitely did like him; this was downright chatty, as if he were a friend or someone here to do business that he could share a drink and a joke with and Yngvi didn't know what to do with. "Let the imagination run wild. Next time? Next time I'll see about bringing in something more suitable to test you."  
  


* * *

  
  
Suitable turned out to be people in the coats – Berit was one of them, Yngvi noticed – stood still at first so he could get a feel for it. Some of them giving him frank and honest assessments on the lie that cut him to the bone but it was all a lesson even when it stung. They gave pointers. Then it was the graduation to grabbing his hands, fast enough that sometimes it almost had him leaping clean out of his skin thinking he might wet himself (the urge was very much there, at least the first couple of times).  
  
(He'd long outgrown that. There was no other choice, you got gobbled up if you couldn't make it.)  
  
Then came the next step: targets. Items planted on certain individuals to be lifted during the day. Usually his own fellows to start with. The ending was with his tutors, cold sweats breaking out.  
  
Hulda had been left off that list but it was probably cruel or unusual even for Einar to have anyone try to go through the pockets of their top smuggler.  
  
Once he'd made it to pickpocketing freely from their own, he was unleashed upon the undercity same as apprentice thieves were, paths crossing back and forth where territories didn't so much overlap as nestle next to one another. Warnings and gossip were traded and elven, human, and those between, weren't so very different to any of the rest. Just taller. Smellier. The humans mostly.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Go on then," Snorri – not Snorri, he was making a case for Brunswick these days and where he'd plucked that name from Yngvi hadn't a clue but if  _he_ had a name like Snorri he'd be trying to change it too – said with a nudge that almost bowled him over since he wasn't expecting it. They were lined up for a wash before bed and the grime was starting to make Yngvi itch by now; he'd had to go from sparring lessons right to the workshop then off to go get some parts made, sweltering in the forges.  
  
"Go on  _what_?" He asked with a hard shove back that prompted complaints when it sent Sno--  _Brunswick_  into Erna and Pernille, Jim and Gunnar looking up too when both of the girls folded their arms.  
  
"Big boss man, what's it like? All that time off on your lonesome with him."  
  
Yngvi shoved his way through to the basins, water lukewarm by now, carving himself a thin sliver of soap that he lathered up as he shucked off his shirt to get to work. Dunking his head in the basin bought him time, holding his head under until he was forced to come up for a breath; his interrogator as it were had decided to time himself just the same so Yngvi couldn't put it off any longer.  
  
"It's—well it's lessons, innit?" He lathered up a rag, scrubbing under his armpits since those were the worst offenders and the smell was getting to be offensive even when they were all piled in one room together, stink atop stink.  
  
"But it's him though," Brunswick pressed and now there were definitely eyes on them, everyone else in various stages of undress – Jim was hopping on one foot with his trousers around his ankles because when had Jim possessed even a half ounce of grace or dignity? – as they scrubbed up in washbasins, some of the usual horseplay abandoned in favour of watching his skinny, most likely spotty but he couldn't see it for himself so he wasn't certain, back, gooseflesh erupting at their stares crawling over him. "It's  _him_  and you're alone. The two of you. Is he—well there's stories…"  
  
"It's not just me and him—" Yngvi tried since that was the truth of the matter only he was all too swiftly talked over as he shook water out of a now-blocked right ear.  
  
"C'mon Yngvi, don’t be an arse, how often do we get to see him?" It was Jim this time, voice even wetter after the trials and tribulations of trouser removal and Yngvi glanced over to his brother for support to see that Gunnar was giving him a  _look_ ; yes, Yngvi told him things, but it was lessons, what did he say beyond what he was learning and if it was hard?  
  
Had Gunnar wanted to know this whole time too Had he kept from prying because that was just the same sort of unspoken rule they'd grown up knowing since they'd been born?  
  
"He expects you to be good. Better'n good. But it's like—he's never given me a clout for anything like Vibeke does if you do something wrong or she reckons you're not following her instructions or whatever reason she's come up with, it's more like…" he grabbed a cloth to dry his upper half, tugging his shirt back on before starting to tackle the bottom half, no sense of modesty to be found amongst them usually but there was a layer of scrutiny focussed solely on him and his words that there wasn't on other days. "He wanted to see what I'd do. Still wants to."  
  
There was a murmur at that which bought him the time he needed to finish scrubbing the essentials down below and to get his things tugged back up so he wasn't there in the altogether when their judgement was turned on him.  
  
"What's that even like?" Erna asked, open wonder on her face and at that he blow out such a breath that his cheeks bulged.  
  
"Now that's a good question: weird? I didn't know what to do but how it all turned out in the end, I reckon that's what he wanted since I did what came to mind and he smiled. And that was creepy, no mistake there, but not bad creepy you get me? But still creepy cause how often does someone older or high up like that smile at us without it being bad?" There was another murmured chorus but this time at was at least nodded agreement because he spoke the truth and nothing but the truth when it came down to that detail; if there was a smile from a tutor, nine times out of ten you were favouring one side of your arse by dinner and probably finding something cool to hold to your face or head for good measure. Yngvi could only really think of Hulda smiling at him without a chill down the spine but Hulda was special that way.  
  
"Why'd he pick you anyhow?" Pernille, wringing out her long golden hair (astonishingly rare down here, there was plenty of talk about hair of gold that they were all caught up in these days now when it hadn't mattered too much before) who cast him such a  _look_  that he made to hoist his trousers up, remember that he already had, and made to do with folding his arms in front of his chest instead. Only that made it worse. There were things you just  _knew_  after all so he wrung his rag out over a basin of water the same colour as the slack tub, accumulated dwarven filth making its way down the ranks, dried himself off a little more, and at least buttoned his shirt.  
  
(One day he'd learn casual. Ten years and more he'd learn casual from humans, an elf, and a part-elven. Still you had to try to act it even if you couldn't.)  
  
"What's that s'posed to mean?" Gunnar spoke up before Yngvi could with the offended tone only a brother could muster and his heart swelled as much as it sank. Gunnar who saw the good, overlooked the bad. It's what brothers did but Pernille would seize on it as she hopped off her barrel, clothes still clinging to her damp body same as the rest of them that though that didn't make her any less intimidating in the moment.  
  
"He's good at traps, don't get me wrong, I've seen what he's made and he's better'n the rest of us with languages I think, at least with lots of them when it comes to listening and knowing. Not writing 'em down, that's Sno—sorry Brunswick's thing, he's best at that, he'll never get the ink out from under his nails or off his knuckles if he even bothered to scrub his hands in the first—"  
  
"What's the point?" Brunswick interrupted, punctuated by the wet smack of a rag slapping wetly at Pernille's feet when it missed its mark. "They'll be as bad again tomorrow."  
  
She continued as if he hadn't tried lobbing a soggy projectile. "Gunnar's the alchemy boy what no one's had in so long they'd been making do, probably. Erna's decent with traps, better with knives and being quiet so one day she'll get to do that but not yet since some stuff means hurry up and wait and Jim…" Pernille looked over at Jim, sighed, and looked back at Yngvi with as expansive a shrug as a dwarven girl in the region of an age to most likely be counted on two hands and a few extra fingers might muster. "I don't know, he runs faster and can take a message, must be good for something but you? You got stabbed and Einar made a big speech but here's how it happened: you got yourself stabbed over the head of what, exactly?"  
  
"Because I'm  _loyal_  to all of us is what! Maybe he sees that and you're just jealous it's not you. What's a pretty song get us? Singing for your supper ain't filled the pot yet has it?" They were ugly words, clawing their way out of some nasty place that lurked in the darker parts of him that rarely saw any light of day, some small piece of satisfaction glowing warm and hot when Pernille's face got all pinched and red when he said it because she could fart about all she liked with fiddles and lutes and pipes and all that with whatever tutor she had but it wasn't Einar.  
  
Einar had never lifted a glass to  _her_. Pernille had never spilt  _her_  blood after all and had it acknowledged same as he had.  
  
Still she advanced, picking up speed with the surety any of them possessed that no amount of time away from their forebears birthed as they had been deep beneath the crust of the world could be stripped from them, hands clenched at her sides until suddenly everyone was between them, young voices raised in a shrill cacophony to keep the peace.  
  
"You're a shit!" She spat, red all the way down to the open neck of her shirt, cheeks blotchy as Jim struggled to hold her back, arms visibly straining. "You're such—you're a shit with a shit face Yngvi!"  
  
"I'm not a shit with a  _lute_!" He shot back before he could help himself, Gunnar luckily making it over to him before he could do worse, dragging him out of the washroom, past the little ones still waiting for their turn who were studiously pretending to have heard  _nothing_. They'd be gossiping furiously before bed.  
  
"What's wrong with you?" His brother mutter as he half-dragged him to bed, Yngvi allowing himself to be shoved into his as he kicked off his boots and reached for the nightshirt. The fight had gone out of him now and had left him deflated. Small. Acutely ashamed but aware that an apology couldn't follow what had come out of him. He balled up his dirty clothes and tossed them on the floor for the morning, they'd do a few more days before needing a wash as he tugged the nightshirt over his head, wet clinging about his neck. "Yngvi.  _Yngvi_."  
  
"What?" He snapped and the guilt was a kick in the teeth. He didn't snap at Gunnar. He couldn't look him in the eye now.  
  
"Don't  _what_  me Yngvi, c'mere, no stop it—" Gunnar gave him a tug closer when he tried fighting him off, submitting to the fingers that combed through his hair with reluctance, separating it into sections for a braid. "Just breathe, right? What was all that about?"  
  
He couldn't look up without wrenching his head but there were people coming in. Him and Gunnar had left first so Pernille would have to be one of the people headed to bed now and he wouldn't have been able to look at her anyway, even if he could. Gunnar was always smart that way. Allowing his brother to coax his hair into a rough braid as everyone else started to get ready for bed same as they were, he took a deep breath and tried to think about what he was supposed to say. He didn't know where it had come from except from somewhere mean and ugly, a hard stone in your boot you couldn't get out that you thought you could ignore only you couldn't, one that ground itself in your sole as the day went on, had you hiding a limp and cursing to find some ragged bloodied hole that had been dug open and Pernille had gone jobbing her fingers in it, in front of everyone.  
  
As much as he loved Gunnar though, tonight he wasn't going to tell him all that.  
  
His head sagged forward enough to feel the sting where the hair pulled, shoulders curling inward with Gunnar sat there behind him to shield him from anyway gawkers.  
  
"She was snapping at me, you have to answer back for it or you get pick on. It's how it is."  _You know that_ , is what he meant.  _It's how it goes, it's how it always goes. I'm the one who makes faces about it and I resent you making me explain it to you now._  
  
"Bit nastier than you normally get is all." Mildly said, all things considered.  
  
"Well maybe that's how it has to be, we'll be going up top soon enough and if she can't handle it then that's her business. Einar saw me—"   
  
"That's all anyone wanted to know. I've never asked."  
  
"You could've."  
  
"But I didn't." Again, Gunnar sounded mild but Yngvi couldn't see him. He wanted to.  
  
"Why didn't you?" He asked, not knowing if he sounded hurt, if Gunnar sounded hurt, if Gunnar  _looked_  hurt; he and Gunnar shared everything after all.  
  
"Some things…it's Einar. You don't question. There's always been enough said and I thought maybe it'd be good for you after what happened. I thought you'd die, Yngvi, it's only adults I've seen bleeding that way and even then they've died sometimes." Gunnar's voice had lost that mildness but had gone all hushed, close enough to his ear that Yngvi shivered. Or maybe it was what he was saying. Least that was what he told himself as he reached back blindly to pat Gunnar's nearest knee, leaving his hand there.  
  
"You never said." Yngvi's voice matched Gunnar's for softness. Seemed he wasn't the only one not saying things either but that seemed a huge thing to miss out. What had he missed? Or had he not wanted to see it?  _All they ask is everything._  It had been rattling in the washroom. It hadn't  _stopped_ rattling ever since Hulda had said it but what was he supposed to say?  
  
They all knew. It was there in them. On them. His loyalty wasn't meant to be some knotted twisted thing only now it was or maybe it had always been like that and it was only now that he was aware of it wrapped around his insides.  
  
"I didn't know how to say, it just is what it is, it's what you do. It's what I have to do and maybe one day I'll be good enough less so less people'll do because it's been Reidar on his own all that time." Gunnar's hands slowed but didn't stop. Yngvi understood that eagerness for something to do. Kept spare parts in his pockets just for that circumstance. Asked to take things from the workshop at the end of the day. Restless twitchy fingers and staccato beats tapped out on tables and thighs. "Loyal."  
  
"Yeah. Loyal." He sniffed hard, choked on it. "I'm loyal, yeah, no one gets to question it, I work hard, I've made mistakes but I'm  _here_ , I'm still here and she," he darted a glance as far as he could but it was only a blur, no sight of Pernille, "don't get to go lording it over me because what," if Pernille was listening – since he couldn't see – and bristling for another round that was on her but Yngvi had the sense to keep his voice low though that didn't account for the years all of them strained for whispers, "she's wanting extra? You earn it. So she can go get stabbed then."  
  
"You don't mean that."  
  
Yngvi bit his tongue to keep from saying more, Gunnar tying the braid off then coming to sit round in front of him, and his face was all pinched and blotchy the way Pernille's had been but different. Scrunched up like the smile he'd put on was struggling to hold up a crumbling foundation.  
  
"You don't mean that," he repeated, more emphatically this time.  
  
"Maybe I do and I'm a shit like she says."  
  
"You're a shit but not like that, you're not. This is—that was nasty but it's how it is, how it has to be but you're not them." That distinction. Us and them. What they'd be one day maybe but not yet, promises made to be better, somehow, though Yngvi could never see how, the weight of it dragging him down, down, down, but hopefully not Gunnar with him if that could be helped. His brother flopped down on his back on Yngvi's bed to stare up at him. "How come it matters so much to you all the time though? Being loyal? It's always been a  _thing_  with you?"  
  
"Dunno." It sat wrong to say that but he didn't have the words for it, couldn't possibly have the words for the enormity of  _why_  it mattered so much that it ate holes in him sometimes, tore at him this way and that, worried him until he was certain there'd be nothing left at the end if he didn't fill up the hours. "Just does. S'posed to matter most to us above all things. It's everything. It's always everything but it's like two opposite things in your heart all at once. But maybe that's what it's meant to be same as truth's a thing you could heat up at the forge, all malleable like."  
  
Yngvi sat a long time after that, until all the breathing in the room evened out, until Gunnar curled into a ball, until Jim snored wetly, until Pernille mumbled softly in her blankets. Then he crept from the bed, tucked his brother in to go sit in Gunnar's bed a while longer, chewing his bottom lip raw.  
  


* * *

  
  
Yngvi was up to his elbows in soapy water, assigned kitchen duty which was never a joke because it meant you ended up as soaked as the dishes at the end of the night but he'd shunted his name up the roster a little. Some nudging. Traded off with someone older who hadn't peered too much when there was gambling to be done. He wanted the peace. If Gunnar noticed the avoidance, he'd kept shutting his mouth about it (he looked, Yngvi caught him looking, caught him looking because Gunnar wasn't good at hiding his face that way, all open and earnest) and everyone had avoided Yngvi like he'd caught a plague or a pox except when something forced them to speak so it had been quiet, or as quiet as it got, but for the buzzing in his head.  
  
Scouring the burnt-on crust of stew out of the deep pan, a sleeve threatening to fall down that he had to tug up with his teeth, scrubbing stubbornly at whatever stubborn and awful thing that came away finally in slimy clumps that had him grimacing was better than dealing with anyone. Soaked right through. Shivering. But alone.  
  
Until a hand clapped him on the shoulder and he jumped, water sloshing all over.  
  
"Oi!"  
  
"Relax." Erna sat herself down on a stool and flicked her black curls over her shoulder. He couldn't help but notice the knife in her hand, a crude little thing but more likely than not one to fit her same as the tools he collected and curated fitted him as best he could gather. "Just wanted a chat."  
  
"Right." It came out through a clenched teeth, a throbbing aching jaw and he turned back to the pot, working it carefully since his fingers had long ago become a pruney mess. "What d'you want?"  
  
"A chat." She enunciated the two words slowly, as if he were a particularly dim child to be dealt with. "You're avoiding all of us."  
  
"So you drew the short straw then? Sure Brunswick didn't rig it this time?"  
  
"Can you not be a shit for a few minutes maybe? Gunnar's mooning about, I didn't hear whatever you two were going on about but Pernille wouldn't stop going on—anyway he's upset and I like your brother. Honestly? I don't mind you, you're not terrible all the time. But right now? You're a shit."  
  
"I'm just trying to do the dishes. Finish up a thing. Get to my bed." Was this what being old was going to be like? Was this the rest of his life spooling out? A little taste? He almost shuddered at it or maybe that was sodden congealed pastry touching his fingertips by surprise in murky water.  
  
Erna sighed, flipping her knife around her fingers from the sound of it as Yngvi finished the pot and hauled it out the basin to dry but the fire. All down his front was soaked, an uncomfortable reminder of the washroom argument he'd been trying to put out of his head. "It's not like you to be quiet. It's weird."  
  
"Maybe it's better if I'm quiet, ever think of that?" He stared her down as he said it, chin jutting out, arms folded and unfolded quickly when it only made his shirt cling to his chest worse.  
  
"I think if you're quiet you'll explode honestly and it only encourages Jim to make up for your absence." They both managed a laugh at that; Jim's stories before Yngvi had sloped off had been…meandering for lack of a better word. "You know Pernille, it's all blown over already. Thing is, right," Erna sat herself up a little straight, pointing the knife at him then flipped it up and away with a little fumble (Yngvi wouldn't be able to do that, he couldn't quite follow the motion), "Pernille don't know 'bout knives. I mean she's got some lessons with us but I'm off on my own from the rest of you for things 'cause they saw something in me that made them say: yeah, she'll be good at that, she's got something in her, and I don't got words for that but I can do it. I think I can. And I can  _think_  how they want and need me too. Wasn't Einar who picked me, true, but orders come down, someone signs off on it. That man what stabbed you, he weren't an assassin or anything but I know about stabbing and how to do it and what it does. You aren't the same on the other end of it."  
  
Erna scrubbed a hand across the freckled bridge of her nose, shaking her head so her curls fell forward. Yngvi shifted his weight from foot to foot, glancing with longing at his coat hanging on a hook by the door. No chance of escape now. Least not a subtle one; Erna was fast as any of them, definitely on par with him so she might well catch him right quick and they might end up in a heap on the floor and that wasn't how he wanted the night to go.  
  
"Why does me getting stabbed matter?"  
  
"'Cause you got stabbed. Could've died. I'll do that. And it's…I'm going to do that. Kill people. For us. Just us. Loyalty. Everyone wants to prove themselves, there's ways to bleed for it." Erna sounded off, unhappy maybe or that might've been in his head, wanting an echo of himself in her voice. "Pernille? She probably won't know it. Jim might, depends where they send him, how fast he runs, how gobby he gets. Brunswick, maybe. Gunnar? Probably not but he'll see the other end." (It went without saying the whole  _not more than the rest of them_.) He took a breath. Looked over at her as she hopped off the stool, quiet as a mouse. Quieter. Mice were loud enough to be snaffled by dwarven children wanting a dinner. "Everyone wants to be loyal."  
  
"Hurts being loyal." The admission twisted his mouth as he said it, like he was trying to smile, and it was enough to have her laughing.  
  
"Yeah, she pisses and moans about her fingers and throat whenever she gets done, and all right, we all do our part, but no one asked you to do that, did they? You did it. That's  _loyal_."  
  
It twisted itself in him. Wrapped itself around the scar on his belly where Hulda's words, Pernille's words, Gunnar's words, Erna's words, and Einar's smile all pressed against it, wanting  _out_.  
  
"It'll be blown over just…I dunno how it goes with traps and thieving," Erna continued because Yngvi's contributions apparently weren't needed too much, "but when you need to be proper quiet how I do, you need to talk or they say it does things to you, isn't good and all that. Might know that if you said anything to your brother."  
  
"Right, right, I hear you. Can I go change m'shirt now I'm getting cold." He forced another smile, shivering in the most exaggerated fashion that he could and gestured to the whole of his still sopping self.  
  
"Reckon you're off the hook for now but stop sloping off to bed with your mouth puckered up tighter than an Order soldier's bumhole. Deal?"  
  
"Deal."  
  
She made him shake on it before he could grab his coat and scarper, still with that terrible sinking in his belly, tail tucked firmly between his legs.  
  


* * *

  
  
Pernille punched him in the mouth. Hard. Called him a bunch of names that twisted him up and put him right through the floor.  
  
Then it was back to normal by bedtime with everyone trying to play a round of some card game Brunswick claimed he'd watched after dinner with Jim.  
  
Howls of cheat echoed when the pair inevitably won and Yngvi found himself laughing without it being dredged out of him then went in the days that followed to find their aunts and uncles to learn how to play. And better yet, how to properly cheat.  
  


* * *

  
  
Vibeke banged the door early when mid-summer made even the undercity shimmer with a murky heat, far earlier than any of them would normally wake, a lantern in hand as Yngvi swung himself upright, heart hammering. Erna had done the same – good to know he wasn't alone in that certain fear – as the others groaned, scrabbling to rouse themselves.  
  
"Up, dressed, present yourselves," Vibeke called with the door shut enough to not wake everyone in the neighbouring rooms as they did as instructed, grumbling to themselves until she shouted again. "Do I hear  _complaints_  my children?"  
  
Silence followed. Yngvi knew her best after all and even if she said he did good work, she was a trapmaker and an aunt, not to be trifled with or to suffer backtalk under any circumstance, least not from the likes of them. He lit the candle on the stand between his and his brother's bed so they stood a chance of finding their clothes, attempting to look somewhere close to decent as he tried to calm his frantic heart. Faster than any little mouse he'd ever caught, a fluttering thrumming all the way up in his throat.  
  
"What d'you reckon?" Brunswick asked as soon as Vibeke gave them their privacy.  
  
"It has to be today, don't it?" Jim replied because Jim took messages so he considered himself somewhat in the know when it came to such things even if he might do better to clean his ears out and grow a brain. Probably not a thing he could do at this rate, Pernille had declared not long ago after the cards incident.  
  
"All of us are the right age…" Erna's agreement, if it was that, was cautious as she made for the door, sharing a glance with Pernille. "Yngvi, Gunnar?"  
  
"Reidar's said nothing, you heard anything?"  
  
"Nothing – you know Vibeke's got jaws that clamp up tighter than a bear trap."  
  
Pernille looked over, brows knit together. "What about Hulda though? Embla and her are close enough to know that Embla knows Hulda's fond 'cause she told me."  
  
Yngvi's face flushed, the relative darkness welcome in hiding it as they put the candles out so as not to waste them. "Not the edge of word out of her either, sorry."  
  
"So Jim's the authority," Gunnar said miserably which caused Jim to puff out his chest regardless. "Careful you don't trip over yourself there mate else you'll not be coming with us, will you?"  
  
Jim laughed, no complaint forthcoming as giddiness rose in all of them instead of suspicion because it had to be about time after all, why wouldn't it be time for them to be allowed off into the world proper to see all there was to be seen in Belnesse? Enough time spent in lessons down here, enough time under the thumb with the new crop of little ones and arrivals toiling away here where they'd once been as they filed out to where Vibeke waited for them. This early and most things were still quiet. Grave shift. So they'd heard it called, not a thing that made sense exactly but as with most things it wasn't their place to question ( _maybe_ , Yngvi thought as he followed, the girls leading the boys,  _we'll find out soon_ ) however since the undercity never slept it only meant fewer bodies instead of none.  
  
In the main hall where they ate, the six of them sat at the breakfast table where a proper breakfast awaited them. A cooked breakfast. With good tea. They fell upon it with a nod, no one wasting time asking stupid questions when there was crispy bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, spiced sausages, and fried eggs on the plate, all of it to be mopped up with a thick slice of dark bread, cutlery lick clean. No chatter out of them at so fine a feast this early in the day. By the time they were done, the adults filing in cut any chance of talk short.  
  
Einar headed the procession and after him were a smattering of higher-ups, mostly compromised of their tutors: Reidar, Vibeke who'd excused herself, Ivar and Dagmar who were in charge of weapons and fighting, Embla, Alvis who taught them their letters and languages. Casper was there too but Yngvi supposed money matters had to be accounted for or maybe he just got included because money mattered. Hulda smiled at them because of course she was there and Yngvi managed a smile back as the greasy breakfast started to sit uneasily in his belly; under the table Gunnar gripped his hand, nudged a knee against his.  
  
"Morning, morning all of you, my thanks for coming so early to meet me today on what we can hope is an auspicious day. Today," Einar clapped his hands together, a sound that echoed throat the room, not that he needed to capture their attention, his voice one made to ring out in grander halls than these, "you embark on a new challenge. I stand amidst your tutors who have told me that you have passed tests and training, some of which I have seen with my own eyes, loyalty demonstrated to us all that does each and every person who lives amongst us as one of us proud. You have survived thus far beneath the city. Indeed you have  _thrived_  to have come so far but no longer will you be restricted. What say you to the chance to prove yourselves?"  
  
Yngvi hadn't realised he'd been bent forward over the table, breath held at Einar's words until the pain of it cutting sharply into his ribs until joining in the chorus of cheers reminded him. Gunnar's hand squeezed tightly in his until the knuckles popper. Someone, he couldn't tell who, was gripping one of his knees hard enough to bruise. They were afterthoughts. Finally.  _Finally_.  
  
Einar lifted his hands after a long moment, quiet reigning once more. "Well well, your tutors have the right of it, not only ready but eager, hungry even after as hearty a breakfast as that. What luck we woke you early enough to head out with the very best of us for Hulda, smuggler of tales you'd scarce believe, has volunteered to chaperone you all up top for your first trip. You will listen to her words as if they were my own for they are. You will remember who you are. Where you have come from. What you do. Remember today. Today you grow again: childhood has ended for you now, there is no going back to it."  
  
Their tutors took up the cheering, a great stamping of feet that Yngvi swore had the floor beneath him shifting and rumbling as he dared a glance over at his brother. Today. It was today after all these years beneath the city, knowing nothing but the underside of Belnesse that at last they'd get to see something more and with Hulda no less as she took the space generously offered by Einar, her hair swept back in unassuming braids, scars crinkling around her mouth as she smiled.  
  
"My thanks to Einar, patriarch." He dipped his hands at her show of respect, signalling for her to continue. "Today we tour Belnesse because you urchins think you've seen beneath her skirts but believe me, you've seen nothing at all of her: I know Belnesse in ways few others do which is why I thought who better than me to teach you. You'll keep up. You'll stay sharp. You'll mark my words. This is the one day anyone'll go easy on you. Remember that. Get your things that need getting and come meet me by the steps."  
  
Everyone ignored the laughter as six young dwarves tripped over their own feet, shoving and shouting as they charge off, Yngvi grabbing Gunnar tight as they went.  
  
"I didn't think—"  
  
"I know! We've waited forever—"  
  
"Now we're finally going to see it all!"  
  
"The sky! The sun!"  
  
"The streets! The sea!"  
  
"Oi! Hurry up!" Brunswick hollered over his shoulder, the one lingering at the back of the pack, both girls and Jim a puff of dust on the way to the bedroom, all the prompting they needed to race after him for their last few things, shrieking without a care.  
  
Today no one would reprimand them. Today was at last their day. A day fought for, sweat, struggled, even bled for where so many others with names and faces long forgotten had never reached. Gunnar slung an arm around Yngvi who joined Pernille when she began the bawdiest war song she'd tried teaching them once all the way to the steps that beckoned freedom; Yngvi swore he heard it echoed by others on the way there with their eyes upon them. He couldn't see them. There was Hulda and Hulda alone, her and her copper hair and the grin on her face as she stood waiting.  
  


* * *

  
  
Belnesse by morning as it had ever been according to Hulda as she pushed aside the heavy doors to lead them blinking and squinting into the murky dawn light, brighter than they'd seen it, gagging at the reek of the tide and how fish happened to smell when they'd been rotting for days because Belnesse had little anyone wanted to catch, and dead bodies never lingered long enough in the undercity to stink. The smoke of the foundries blotted the skies, turned it strange colours that they gawked at as Hulda ushered them through an alley, through to a proper market that opened up wide, already beginning to bustle even at this hour, thronged with humans, elves, dwarves, those that might've had blood from any of them mingled together so it wouldn't be polite to stick a pin in them by all accounts.  
  
Knights of the Order patrolled. Thieves flitted through that Yngvi recognised by their careful gait. Dwarves of better standing stared them down.  
  
Eyes. Plenty of eyes. And all of them, even Hulda, vanishingly small in the great vastness of the city that unfolded before them, less a warren than a sprawling, jumbled maze of sorts.  
  
But an opportunity as he recalled Einar's words to him as well as Hulda's words: all they asked was everything and to let the imagination run wild. Perhaps, just perhaps, up here there was a loophole if he bent his and Gunnar's heads together with the open air and opportunity, more eyes to watch, yes, but eyes looking at a hundred things all at once, a thousand.  
  
Belnesse unfolded before him same as the plans to a trap, him with the picks for a lock, and he grinned at his brother, hurrying after Hulda into the promise of the new morning.


End file.
